


known and unknown (spanning everything between)

by myownremedy



Series: known and unknown (spanning everything between) [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Missing Scene, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-03-12
Packaged: 2018-03-17 01:40:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3510395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myownremedy/pseuds/myownremedy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A thought Shou does not share with Mikasa:</p><p>Eren and Armin are what lay outside the walls, and Mikasa won’t know that until she reaches the top.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. then/now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sharp_eyed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharp_eyed/gifts).



> This fic....so I started writing it in summer 2014, had to put it on hold, picked it back up a week ago, then two days before my self imposed deadline I decided to rewrite the entire thing. Cool!!!!  
> originally part of an art exchange, this is for Ola, who is one of the most kind, patient, determined, enthusiastic, inquisitive, and wonderful people I've ever met. She's been incredibly understanding about everything, and even helped me pick out people's daemons. I love her a lot. OLA, I HOPE YOU LIKE THIS!!!  
> Endless thanks to Ola and Aren and Rai for helping me figure out everyone's daemons - especially Rai, who went above and beyond. I owe you.  
> a list of the daemons in this story, including names, species (with a picture linked through), name meanings, and genders can be found [here [x]](http://marnz.tumblr.com/daemons). I recommend having this open in a separate tab when you are reading, for reference.  
> disclaimer: y'all fictional, some of y'all gay, some of y'all dead, none of y'all mine, bye.  
> edit (4-13-15): this is a transformative work. I make no money off of it. I do not own what inspired this work (Attack On Titan, His Dark Materials book series), but I do own this work itself and hold full copyright over it. Thank you.  
> edit (1-12-16): this is belated but OLA DREW BEAUTIFUL ART FOR THIS STORY!!! She spoils me, she really does. Go look at it here: [[x]](http://totallysharpeyed.tumblr.com/image/127502618845).

A riddle:

 

 _Three children watch everything around them die_ , he hisses in her head, after hours of silence. _One becomes a snake in the grass, a knife in the gut. One becomes the alpha wolf, the righteous, the hopeful and the brave. And one becomes a spider, a builder._

_Who did the right thing? Who will survive?_

 

*

 

The day the Colossal Titan attacks is the day Armin’s daemon settles.

This is the way Mikasa remembers it, a way she picks and chooses her memories; abandoning Carla in memory the way they had abandoned her in life, shielding herself from Hannes’ failure and Eren’s feral screaming, from Carla’s blood arcing through the air.

From the way she had looked around at the carnage and whispered, “it’s happened again.”

Maybe it’s a defense mechanism, remembering this way. Remembering Medea freezing in time, forever a red and blue spider, instead of focusing on it all.

 

What she does remember is a jumble, memories picked out mostly through nightmares and Shou’s own, perfect memory – memories he shields from her until they’re asleep, memories that leak through their shared consciousness.

The lightning had cracked across the sky, splitting their world in two and adults had panicked, the way adults do when nothing goes to plan. The geese had taken flight and Shou, coiled around her neck, had watched, and kept watching when the titan curled enormous fingers around the top of the wall. Snakes could not blink, so he did not look away when so many others did, either vacating their bodies momentarily, frozen in place, or shutting their eyes against what they could not understand.

None of them – Mikasa, Eren, or Armin – had looked away. Even at age ten they were not the kind that shied away from tragedy, but the way that stared it head on.

 

(Perhaps she had known, as the titan kicked a hole in the wall as easily as Eren kicked at the ground in frustration, that Armin’s daemon was done changing. Or maybe it had been when the other titans had flooded in, eyes wild, tongues lolling, hands groping.

 _We are not,_ Mikasa had thought at Shou, each thought requiring immense effort, _we are not prey_.)

 

She had left Armin behind to charge after Eren, who ran towards the titans like a horse runs back into a burning barn. His wolf daemon, Asena, had galloped by one side and Mikasa quickly took up her position at the other, scarf flapping wildly behind her, dust and rock flying through the air.

 

And then – a seemingly endless row of houses, titans lumbering heavily through the streets like a boar lumbers through the brush, and Eren’s scream.

“ ** _MOM!”_**

She’d never heard him scream like this.

 

(Years later it will still haunt her. If Shou had not already settled a year before she knows he would have settled then, from hearing the darkness in Eren’s soul verbalized.

Whenever she thinks this, Shou’s tongue darts out against her neck and she reaches for him, strokes whichever scaled part of him she can reach.)

 

Her memory skips ahead, the images blurring as if she had cried the whole time, but she remembers fragments – the wood of a beam cutting into her slippery palms as she had strained and failed to lift it, Carla trapped below.

The screams and scrambling of Carla’s river otter daemon, struggling as Carla could not. Eren and Carla arguing, and Eren – Eren not listening –

The way she had not listened –

A metallic screech, something she’ll learn to recognize in the future as wires from Three Dimensional Maneuvering Gear, and the fluttering of wings.

Hannes’ hand in hers, Eren wrapped in his arm, the bright green and pink of his hummingbird daemon – the way they had run.

Carla had cried at the end, body shaking, one hand covering her mouth. Mikasa and Eren had twisted to watch, forcing Hannes to half drag them away. The titan had freed Carla with half a second’s work and picked her up, and she had become tiny like a doll, her otter daemon clutched in her arms.

 

(Mikasa can’t, doesn’t remember this but Shou does – the titan had popped off Carla’s hand with a flick of it’s wrist, an easily decapitation, and her daemon had burst into golden light.

 _Dead,_ Shou had thought.

The titan bhad bitten the woman in half and her blood had burst out, arcing through the air, hitting the ground a scant distance behind them but not touching them.

Eren went almost as limp as his mother’s body, shocked into silence, and then Asena had begun to howl, and howl, and howl.)

 

Later, on the boat, they’d found Armin and Mikasa had tried to retreat into him, tried to coax the room from Armin’s skeleton to accommodate him _and_ her. He’d fit neatly beneath her chin, blond hair fluttering with her every breath, and Shou had moved and pressed his flat nose to Armin’s pulse, cool scales dragging against Armin’s skin.

 

(It felt like a firework.)

 

“I’m sorry for leaving you,” she’d whispered – something to be repeated endlessly in the future. Armin had understood, would always understand but Armin is the type of person who thinks he was made to be left. He isn’t, will never be, and Mikasa will never stop telling him that. This was a good of time as ever to remind him, surrounded by blood and carnage, Eren mute beside them.

Maybe she had dreamed up the next part, the careful, light touch of Medea’s legs on her arm, the shiver-warmth linking her and Armin together, gentle but burning hot enough to break every rule that has ever been drilled into them.

 

Chronologically, the armored titan had happened next, just as the boat had turned a gentle corner, the burble of the river too quiet to block out the crash of stone and the horror of hundreds of people left for dead.

Mikasa remembers Asena growling, steadily and terrible – remembers the half healed scabs on Eren’s palms and the way they had split open again, remembers his words…

She doesn’t actually remember his words, because she’d heard it so many times before, and it blurs together endlessly, _kill-them-all-drive-them-out-stop-them_ , but the tears are unique, the role switch is unique –

The way he’d rounded on her like she was a mouse to be frightened, the way something like respect had threaded through Shou’s veins, respect and _memory_ , of this, of blood and a knife and death.

Armin hadn’t known what to do, had never seen this aspect of Eren and Mikasa had stayed silent as Armin had whispered, horrified, _“Eren…!”_

Asena had looked up then, lips trembling back from her teeth, yellow eyes narrowed. Armin had shifted his gaze from Eren to her, and then had reached out one trembling hand, had touched her snout, her long yellow teeth, had moved to stroke her ears.

Shou had raised his head out of Mikasa’s scarf to watch, tail flicking against her collarbone in line with her pulse. _Good_ , Mikasa remembers him thinking. _Maybe this way they’ll survive._

She’d never asked for specifics – was it because Armin never feared Eren and Asena, even when the masks had been ripped off? Was it because Eren had snapped, pledging to do something impossible?

 _I won’t let them die_ , Mikasa had snapped at him, eyes flicking down to Shou.

 _They need more than you_ , his words had reverberated at the base of her skull. _They have to want it._

 

( _“You have to fight!”_ )

 

 _And now they do_ , Mikasa had thought, and then – she’d worked hard on thinking nothing at all.

 

*

 

 

In their world, there are rules.

1)   Don’t talk about the outside world.

2)   Never question the King.

3)   The Walls are to be respected, the titans feared and not spoken of.

4)   Daemons are to be small and portable. They are not to take up more space then a small pet.

Eren breaks all of these rules. It takes Mikasa only days to notice it; he talks about the outside world with Armin, he questions the King and the Walls _loudly and in public,_ he talks about the titans _often_ , and his daemon is a wolf.

It is this last part that makes people fear Eren, though he is unaware of it, just as he is unaware of how unusual he is – an angry, brave boy, driven to violence at age nine. Not complacent livestock, as he often calls his fellow citizens in a sneering tone, but a predator. A wolf. A hunter.

 

_(“My last name means hunter,” he explains to her one night, soon after she has come to live with them. “If you want to change your last name to Jaeger, I won’t mind. But you don’t, do you?”_

_“No,” she says at last, stroking her hand along Shou’s back. “I need to keep my name.”_

_“Yeah,” Eren breathes. They are sharing a pallet downstairs, near the fire; the embers illuminate his face. “Ackerman is a good name.”_

_“Thank you,” she replies. It’s sort of funny to her, that she is so attached to it. **Ackerman** is not what got her parents killed.)_

If he lives to be an adult – and sometimes, Mikasa honestly wonders before reminding herself she will take care of him, she will make sure he does – he will be as taboo, as feared as the Survey Corps.

But it doesn’t matter, because they are who he wants to join, who he wants to be.

Mikasa does not understand it. She is not someone who gets angry at things that she cannot change.

 _But that’s the thing_ , Shou hisses in her ear. _He thinks he **can** change them._

 _He can do anything_ , Mikasa says loyally, and then winces.

Shou laughs at her.

 

*

 

She tries not to dwell on it, on those early days, days her classmates ask Armin and Eren and Bertolt and Reiner about – never her, never Annie, never Ymir.

 

(She remembers punching Eren square in the jaw and standing over him while he cries, fury pumping through her veins – how _dare_ he insult Armin, how _dare_ he throw Armin’s gift back in his face, how _dare_ he abandon the gift Carla had given him – survival.

She remembers Shou watching Medea with lazy interest, tongue flicking out and body tensed – remembers worrying, remembers Shou reassuring her.

 _I wouldn’t,_ he’d promised. _She’s a daemon_.

 _Still prey_ , Mikasa had retorted.

 _To you, everything is prey_ , Shou had pointed out, and Mikasa had shut her eyes and tried to turn away.)

 

If her classmates had asked Mikasa, she would have told them this:

They had been sent to the frontier, as the leaves and the frost were falling heavy on the earth. Armin’s grandfather took it all in stride, teaching them about autumn and winter planets, about how to hoe and till and weed a field, about animal kingdoms and names in a long dead language.

He had sat with them, watching them huddle together for warmth, his rumpled hat shoved down around his ears for warmth, and built stories with his words, sketched them out with his hands.

They were given an acre each and a hut to share. Armin’s grandfather had turned a blind eye to the way they touched each other’s daemons indiscriminately, to the way Shou had coiled around Eren’s neck and Medea had rested in the hollow of Mikasa’s collarbones.

 

Armin’s grandfather’s daemon had been what he called a ‘ring tailed lemur,’ black and white with orange eyes and a permanently worried expression. He’d taken great care to tell them all about their daemons, whispering when the stars were rising and the moon was out –

_Shou is a **dendroaspis polylepis**_ **.** _The common name for that is a Black Mamba._

_Asena? She’s a grey wolf, a Canis Lupus._

_Medea is some sort of Opadometa, an orb spider._

These names had been things scavenged from forbidden books, books Armin and Eren used to pour over, learning about something called the ocean, something Mikasa never understood the allure of – but it held sway over them, so it called to her as well.

(She never wants to be without them.)

 _And what is Zosia?_ Armin had asked, pointing at his grandfather’s daemon.

 _She’s a lemur catta_ , the old man had replied.

 _What about you?_ Mikasa had asked, staring up at the shoddy roof, the moonlight doing it’s best to find it’s way in. _What is your name?_

 _Herman_ , the old man had replied, voice wreathed in smiles. Mikasa had risen up on her forearms to look at him – all she’d been able to see was the proud beak of nose and his gleaming bald head, hat hung up on a peg by the door.

 

(Later, she will understand the smile.)

 

*

 

 

A dream

(A memory):

 

_“We can never go home again.” Eren’s voice, rusty like hinges long unused, startles her. She flinches, and then shifts so she can look at him. The moonlight barely illuminates his profile but she can see the shine of his eyes, the outline of his shoulders, his nose, his mouth._

_“I know,” Mikasa replies. She looks away, sees Asena has opened one predatory-yellow eye. “Eren…”_

_She moves one arm, clumsy with cold and almost sleep, and fits it around his shoulders. He sighs and copies her, and they lean against each other._

**_What would have happened if it had been you, and not your mother?_ ** _Mikasa wonders, horrified. **What would I have done?** Eren’s smell, something that has signaled life since he wrapped his scarf around her neck, fills her nose and she sighs and droops against him, moving until she is cradled against him, face mashed against his chest, both of his arms around her._

_Shou slithers free, wrapping himself around Eren’s neck and Mikasa feels the quick stuttering of Eren’s breath, can **feel** the shiver-warmth that is two of the things she loves the most interacting again. They don’t do this often, can’t or don’t need too, Mikasa isn’t sure – but she needs it now, and she feels Eren duck his chin so his cheek presses against Shou’s scaly back._

_“Where are we?” Eren asks after long moment. He brings one hand up to stroke her hair and Mikasa tries not to laugh at the normality of it._

_“I don’t know. Inside Wall Rose.”_

_“Where’s Armin?”_

_“With his Grandfather.”_

_“They made it.” Eren exhales shakily. “Good.”_

_“Armin’s daemon settled,” Mikasa says after another long minute. “He hasn’t told me yet, there hasn’t been time, but –”_

_“Of course she has,” Eren doesn’t sound surprised. “if Asena hadn’t already – she would have, today.”_

_“I thought the same about Shou,” Mikasa admits. “When you screamed – I knew.”_

_“Mikasa,” Eren says and Mikasa sits up, finds the wet shine of his eyes in the darkness. “It’s not going to happen again.”_

_He heard. Of course he did._

_Eren knows her too well, follows her thoughts with a smile. “Asena has good hearing…” he trails off, face clouding, hands spasming against her back._

_Mikasa doesn’t ask, doesn’t let him dwell. “We need to sleep,” she tells him._

_Eren pulls her back down against his chest and she relaxes, shifting so her cheek is against his shirt, so she can see. The last thing she remembers is Shou coiled around Eren’s neck and Asena draped over their legs._

 

*

 

They did their best to make it a home, frost thickening into snow, Mikasa and Eren abandoning farming to hunt game in the forest at the edge of their fields.

Asena had helped, forcing them to run with her, baby fat abandoned as they struggled to keep up with her long legs.

 _Wolves hunt in packs,_ Herman told them one day as they tried to fall asleep. _They run their prey down._

So Mikasa and Eren ran their prey down, shooting it full of arrows once Asena flushed it from the brush, hounding it until it was too exhausted and injured to move.

 

“I’ve never seen a daemon as fierce as his,” Herman had admitted to her one day, petting Zosia’s tail with one gnarled hand. “I’ve never seen a wolf daemon before – and she settled young.”

Mikasa had stroked Shou self consciously, trying to rub warmth into him. He suffered every winter, burrowing beneath her scarf and shirt, leeching heat from her skin.

“What does it mean, to settle young?” She’d asked, watching Eren and Armin skin and gut the hares they’d killed that night. “To settle when something bad happens?”

“Sometimes, the bad things that happen to you are what define you.” Herman had answered with only a few seconds hesitation. “When you’re younger, you have time to figure out what kind of person you are, how to react to things. But sometimes you don’t get the luxury of a choice. Sometimes you’re told what you will be, or are forced to become something to survive, something you wouldn’t have been otherwise.” He’d paused, scratched at the base of Zosia’s tail. “Your daemon is a reflection of your soul, so if you are defined by something bad that happened to you, so is your daemon.”

“But not just bad things,” Mikasa had said, ducking her chin to breathe in the scent of her scarf.

“Not just bad things,” Herman had agreed. “But bad things are more common, unfortunately.” He’d never looked at her differently, though it was clear he knew what had happened, even if Armin didn’t. The way he looked at her then was calm and straightforward, less wild than his daemon’s orange eyes. “This world isn’t fair.”

“No,” Mikasa had agreed, thunderstorms echoing in her ears, a butterfly and a mantis hiding behind her closed eyes. “It’s not. But it is very beautiful.”

 

*

 

Armin never talks about it, about the day his grandfather had left, but Mikasa remembers it clearly – maybe because all of their parents had been taken of them until then, until the day Herman had _left_.

 

She’d known what was happening when she’d woken up and looked out the window, when she had seen the line of troops on the horizon, almost melding with the sky, the pikes and pole arms poking up like naked trees.

“Armin,” Herman had shaken Armin awake gently, his hat flopping with every movement. “Armin.”

Mikasa had taken Eren by the hand and led him out of the cabin, Asena padding steadily next to them. “Look,” she had said, not bothering to point. “Look.”

There had been no where else for him to look but the waves and waves of men, how they had come and come and come, foot soldiers interspersed with refugees wielding pitchforks or spears.

 

(Mikasa had wondered if those spears were like the one Eren had fashioned, a knife affixed to a pole with a length of rope and raw determination.)

 

Eren had wanted to go with them, straining against himself in his urgency and his resolve, and Mikasa –

Mikasa had called him back, stumbling over her words, her fingers tangled in Asena’s ruff and Shou heavy on her breast.

 

*

A memory:

 

_(“There’s so many of them!” Eren protests. “They have a chance, surely –” He’s looking at the soldiers again, the lines and lines of the already dead, but Mikasa turns to look at him. At his proud face, young still, the way the wind is messing up his too-long hair and making him shiver. This is all she wants, she realizes; to watch Eren throughout their life, watch him grow up, watch him laugh, watch him cry, watch him yell, watch him kill titans or work in a factory or do whatever it is he wants, as long as he lives, as long as he lets her follow._

_She doesn’t know if this indomitable hope, this impossible spirit of his, is foolish or if it’s necessary for keeping him alive. Eren will charge into battle without shield or sword or armor, bleeding and dizzy but still fiercely alive. He’ll go into it thinking he’ll live, just by virtue of trying, and he’ll end up dead on the ground._

_But asking him to quiet himself, to duck into the back and let other people fight – that would also kill him. Slower, quieter, the light fading from him, his shoulders slumping, the life leaving too quickly for her to follow._

_She doesn’t know if she would love him like that, if she could love him while he divorced everything he was from himself – she knows she could not love herself if she asked him to do that._

_“Listen to me,” she says, quietly but his head snaps to her at the very first sound. “We will fight the Titans, you and Armin and I. I promise it. But we need time – to grow up, to get good, to learn how to kill them. And then we’ll kill the titans, every single last one of them.”_

_Eren is looking at her the way she is used to looking at him – like if the moon were to lay on the earth in front of them, he’d still choose to look at her at night._

_“We’ll be the hunters,” he says. And then, voice gone soft as the scarf around Mikasa’s neck: “We’ll leave the walls.” Quieter still: “We’ll find the ocean.”_

_( **We’ll be happy,** neither of them says.)_

 

*

 

“Why does Armin sleep with a hat under his pillow?” Mikasa overhears Connie asking one day. She pauses and turns toward him slowly, watching him, Jean and Marco notice that she’s listening, watching their daemons change, gaining and shedding fur and scales and feathers.

Shou emerges from her scarf, mouth gaping open already, and levers his head out until it’s visible, until it’s level with her ear.

“I –” Jean is useless around her, always has been. She ignores him, focusing on Connie.

“We just saw it! By accident!” Connie squeaks, his daemon shuddering from a brightly colored bird to a weasel. “He was washing his sheets.”

“Don’t touch it.” She orders, Shou’s mouth stretching wide, and they finally see – perhaps for the first time – why he called a Black Mamba, the inside of his mouth as dark as an empty sky. “It’s none of your business.”

“Okay, okay,” Marco holds his hands up in surrender, a smile creasing his freckled face. “We’re sorry, we didn’t know.”

She walks away, Shou winding around her neck, mouth shut. It’s not a retreat so much as a signal that this conversation was over, that it never happened.

 

*

 

Herman had waved goodbye and left, an extra pitchfork slung over his shoulder, bare head shining in the weak sunlight.

They’d found Armin clutching the hand in both fingers, blond hair flopped over his face, Medea perched on his knee.

Asena had walked right up to Armin, had nosed his cheek and licked away his tears. Shou had slithered down Mikasa’s body and rested his head on Armin’s foot; a moment later, Armin had reached out and trailed his fingers down Shou’s scaly back.

“He’s leaving,” Armin had choked out. “To help retake Maria.” He’d paused, silence stretching thin. “It’s not going to work. But it will free up more food and more room for the other refugees; maybe it will make a dent in the Titan population. It’s a sacrifice.”

Eren had crouched down, steadying himself with one hand on Armin’s free knee. “Did he tell you that?”

Armin’s lips had twitched up in a poor imitation of a smile. “He didn’t have too.”

“Then he’s not leaving you.” Mikasa’s voice had stayed even. “He’s trying to give you your best chance.”

“Not just me!” Armin had snapped, pushing his hair out of his eyes. “All of us!”

“All of us.” Asena had repeated, and they had startled – she rarely spoke, preferring to blend it as much as possible. “All of us.” She had repeated, and Mikasa had dropped a hand onto her back and tangled her fingers in Asena’s wavy fur.

 

*


	2. known/unknown

After so much life and death, enlisting is almost a let down.

 

Commander Keith Shadis is a man who looks fractured. Mikasa barely recognizes him as the former commander of the survey corps, the man they saw break down that day – always _that day_. She’s distracted by his beard, which looks like the stem of a squash, and by the way he doesn’t know how to deal with any of them.

He hides it, of course, bellows in their faces and mocks them in an effort to break them down. Mikasa almost breaks formation when he insults Armin’s name, thinking of Herman –

_(Armin was named for me)_

– and she thinks some of them are convinced, cowed by his yell and by his mean looking dog daemon, too scared to salute right.

“Connie Springer, of Ragako Village, Wall Rose South Distract,” a boy in front of Mikasa bellows, his salute completely backwards.

“You’re doing it wrong, Connie Springer…” Shadis snarls, lifting Connie up by his shaved head. Connie’s legs dangle, feet kicking a few inches above the ground. He looks like prey, like something being choked to death. His daemon, currently a bird, is fluttering around him and Shadis nervously. Shou’s tongue flicks out, tasting the air. “I explained that this salute demonstrates your resolve to demonstrate your entire heart to the people.” _Not the King_ , Mikasa silently notes. “Is your heart on your right side?!”

Connie gasps, choking for air – and then a girl eating a potato, diagonal and to the front of Mikasa, takes an enormous bite, and Shadis lets Connie fall to the floor.

The boy standing behind the girl looks terrified, daemon shifting back and forth from a lizard to a duck. Potato girl and her daemon, some sort of tiny bear, look blissfully unaware.

Shadis advances slowly, each step loud in the shocked silence. “Hey, you…” His voice is calm. “What are you doing?”

Potato girl keeps chewing, not noticing he’s talking to her – and then Shadis looms over her, teeth bared like a dog’s. “You’re the one I’m talking to! You! Who are you?!”

The girl directly next to Mikasa breathes a tiny, horrified, “ _oh, my god_.”

Potato girl swallows audibly and salutes, potato still in hand. “Sasha Blouse, from Dauper Village, Wall Rose South Distract!”

Shadis looks…mystified. Mikasa wonders if this has ever happened to him, if it’s totally new – or maybe the general unbothered state Sasha has is what’s confusing him.

“Sasha Blouse,” he says, slowly. “What are you holding in your right hand?”

“A boiled potato!” Sasha announces. “The kitchen had a fresh batch, and I couldn’t resist.”

“Did you…steal it?” Shadis asks carefully. “Why?” He’s talking in the manner of a man who is struggling to grasp the world around him. “Why would you choose to eat a potato now?”

“Letting it get cold would have been a waste, so I decided I should eat it now.” Sasha replies seriously.

Shadis stares, silent, for a full thirty seconds. On either side of Mikasa, trainees and daemons are shrinking, like their sheer horror will let them disappear. Mikasa can hear Shadi’s daemon growling, low but consistent.

“Well,” Shadis says finally. “I still don’t understand…Why would you eat that potato?”

Sasha stares at him, brow furrowed. Her daemon’s mouth is slightly open, teeth peeking out. “Are you asking me why people eat potatoes?”

Mikasa has to close her eyes for a moment. Shou’s hissing laughter is barely muffled by her scarf.

The boy with the backwards salute, Connie, has half turned around to goggle at Sasha; so has the rest of his line – a horse faced boy named Jean, a freckled boy named Marco, and Eren. Mikasa wonders what Armin is doing. She can picture the exact face he’s making, the small slanted line of his mouth, his wide, horrified eyes.

Shadis stares at Sasha for so long that she finally clues in he’s not happy. She makes a shocked, gasping noise and then splits the potato in two.

“You can have half,” she tells him, offering him the significantly smaller piece.

Shadis slowly takes the smaller piece and stares at it. “Half…” He says. “Okay.” For one wild second, Mikasa thinks he’s just going to leave Sasha alone, but then: “You can miss dinner and run laps until your legs can’t carry you.”

Sasha wilts. Shadis moves on, still carrying the smaller half of the potato.

 

Instead of a hut to share they have barracks, separated by gender. Mikasa meets her bunkmate, a polite girl named Mina, and negotiates the top bunk – she likes to be able to look around, likes to have a _perch_.

The ceiling here is solid wood, no moonlight peeking there, and Eren and Armin and Medea and Asena are far away. Mikasa doesn’t know how she’ll sleep without Armin on one side and Eren on the other, Asena stretched out over their feet, Shou curled up in a crevasse between their bodies, Medea weaving a web in the window above them. She won’t have anyone’s breathing to match hers too, won’t have the knowledge that they’ll be there when she wakes, won’t have Herman’s hat, worn on Armin’s head or kept on it’s peg, to touch whenever she feels alone.

Mikasa doesn’t believe in panicking but she comes close, sitting on her bed amidst the girls unpacking and introducing themselves, daemons twisting into new and different shapes.

The girl across from Mikasa has a settled daemon. Mikasa’s seen her before on the frontier, recognizes her hooked nose, pale corn silk hair and sullen blue eyes. She recognizes the daemon, a bird with a white heart shaped face and cruel claws.

“Annie,” Mikasa says after a minute, Shou twisting through her fingers, his scales tickling her palms.

The girl, also on the top bunk, looks at her.

“Yeah?” she says finally, hunching her shoulders slightly.

“Oh!” Mikasa’s bunkmate, Mina says. “You know each other?”

“No,” Mikasa says.

“We were both on the frontier.” Annie mutters.

“Oh,” Mina repeats. “Are you – where are you from?”

Annie shrugs. Her daemon’s claws are gouging the wood. Mikasa wonders if the army repairs or replaces beds because of this, if they have to do it often.

“Shingshina,” Mikasa’s voice is flat.

Mina’s daemon, a tiny bird pecking at her foot, changes into a small, thin dog and leaps into her arms. Mina hugs it close, looking up at Mikasa and Shou, and changes the subject.

“This is Fidelis,” she says, nodding to the daemon in her arms. “He’s not quite settled yet, not like yours.”

“Shou.” Mikasa says, indicating him. He pauses to look at Mina and Fidelis, tongue flicking out.

Mina smiles. “I’m going out to meet the others – do you want to come?”

“In a minute,” Mikasa unwinds her scarf. “I have to change.”

Mina leaves and Mikasa hops off the bed, rummaging through her trunk, through her new clothes and her newly unpacked old ones. She can feel Annie’s gaze on her back.

Mikasa folds her scarf and stows it away, changing out of her uniform and into a skirt and an open collared shirt. The heat in the cabin is weighty, making sweat bead down her spine, beneath her arms and on the back on her neck.

“You never introduced your daemon,” Mikasa says once she’s done changing, picking up Shou. He lets her arrange him around her neck, an olive scaled necklace.

Annie stares at her. Her enormous eyes are as pale as the rest of her.

“Kuba.” She says flatly, and it takes Mikasa a minute to realize it’s a name.

She doesn’t like birds of a prey much, never has – they’re Shou’s natural enemy, and she tends to avoid any situation that casts her or Shou as prey instead of predator. She has no idea how Armin and Medea spend so much time with her or Eren, how Medea is trusting enough to perch on Shou’s flat nose. She wouldn’t trust Annie’s daemon with Shou for even half a heartbeat.

“Hmm.” Mikasa stretches, shirt riding up. It’s too small for her, just as Annie’s hoodie is too small. Frontier kids – marked by settled daemons and battered, too small clothes.

She doesn’t invite Annie to come with her as she walks out of the cabin, and Annie doesn’t follow.

 

*

 

Before they left, Armin let Eren cut his hair short again, as short as it had been the day Medea had settled. Mikasa still isn’t used to it – her stomach flips over whenever she sees Armin, and it does tonight when she falls into step with him.

“Dinner?” she asks.

Medea is on Armin’s shoulder, rubbing her two front legs together.

“Eren’s already there,” Armin replies, hearing her unspoken question.

Sasha passes them, not running so much as staggering, her weird daemon lumbering behind her.

“Connie says that he heard Sasha is from a hunting village, somewhere in the mountains,” Armin murmurs after Sasha turns a corner.

“That’s probably why she’s able to run this long,” Mikasa says, brushing her pinky against his instead of thinking of her own mountain, of her own home.

Armin hums in agreement, and then they fall silent, climbing the steps to the dining hall and getting in line for food.

Mikasa sees Asena, curled up on the floor, before she sees Eren. He’s surrounded by a knot of people.

“They’re asking him about…that day,” Armin says under his breath. “Because he’s actually seen a titan.”

“So have you.” Mikasa points out, grabbing two trays and giving one to him.

“Mm,” Armin smiles weakly. “But I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Who would?” Medea squeaks from Armin’s shoulder, voice tiny, and Mikasa smiles down at her.

 

Only Eren would get into a fight, or nearly a fight, on the first day. Mikasa and Armin watch as Eren and the boy with a horse face square off.

“He’s the one who wanted to join the military police, to have an easy life,” Armin mutters. He glances, briefly, at the ceiling – something he does when Eren is being stupid but Armin doesn’t want to tell him.

It’s so typical of Eren, to take offense that someone doesn’t share his passion, his ideals. Shou is sneering inside Mikasa’s head, at the base of her skull, and she’s getting ready to step in, to interfere, when the end of dinner bell tolls and smashes through the tension in the room.

Eren leaves more or less civilly, stalking out of the room and into the humid night and Mikasa follows him quietly, moving past the horse faced boy. His name is _Jean_ , she remembers, remembers saying it in formation earlier, and his daemon is unsettled. Shou is coiling around her neck, moving to face Jean and the rest of the classmates, so he can see Jean’s face when she passes, can see his weird expression, his wide eyes, his reaching hand.

Shou doesn’t tell Mikasa so much as shove the images into her mind, slightly distorted and bleached of color, but she’s _ready_ when Jean calls out.

“Hey, you!” He says, and she turns, keeping her face blank.

The way he’s looking at her is something she’s used to seeing – wonder, bemusement, confusion. The way someone looks at a _thing_ , not a person.

Jean’s stammering, ears and nose red like he has a sudden sunburn. His daemon, currently a cat, twines around his legs. “I, uh, uh – it’s just, you look different from the rest of us.” He hunches his shoulders, withdrawing his hand. Mikasa wonders if he can sense that she wants to break it. “I’m s-sorry,” he mutters. “Your hair is very pretty. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

Mikasa stares him down. Shou is watching Jean intently, like Jean is a mouse, like Jean is his next meal.

“Thank you.” She doesn’t mean it at all, doesn’t hit him but instead turns on her heel and walks out, leaving Jean staring after her. Her skirt swirls around her legs, the way Jean’s cat twined around his. She can feel his eyes on her back.

She hears him follow her, steps thudding on the wooden floor, but doesn’t turn – instead she keeps walking until she’s next to Eren.

“I’m fine, leave me alone.” Eren snaps. Mikasa, keeping her back towards Jean, moves until she can tangle a hand in Asena’s ruff without anyone but her and Eren seeing. Shou moves steadily around her neck until he can see Jean.

 _Prey_ , he thinks, the word echoing with the thud of her heart in her chest.

Asena glances up at her, yellow eyes glowing in the torchlight, and wags her tail once.

“You’re always so impulsive when you’re riled up.” Mikasa says. They start walking, falling into step with each other easily.

“This again?” He asks, shaking his head at her but not bothering to walk any faster. “Anyway, isn’t your hair a little long?” He reaches out and runs a hand through it casually, fingers brushing Shou’s back. Mikasa glances at him. He’s not looking at her like Jean was. He looks thoughtful instead.

“It could cause an accident when you’re practicing with the Maneuver Gear.”

Mikasa frowns and looks down at her hair, holding the ends up for inspection. Eren has a point. He usually does, when he’s not pigheaded with rage, and if she’s going to stay with him…

She can’t afford an accident.

“Very well,” she agrees. “But how short should it be?”

Shou hisses. Jean’s still watching her, watching _them_. Mikasa can feel his eyes on her back. She grips Asena’s fur tighter. Eren glances at her, brows pulling together in concern, but doesn’t ask. He knows better than to ask.

Connie starts yelling at Jean in the distance, and Mikasa exhales in relief. She offers Eren a tiny smile. He smiles back at her, reaching out to touch her arm, and she relaxes further.

Mikasa thinks about saying, _Jean looked at me the way the traffickers looked at me_. She thinks _, I hope you never look at me that way. I hope Armin never looks at me that way._ She thinks _, my hair looks exactly like my mother’s. It’s one of the few things I have of her._

“How short should I cut my hair?” Mikasa prompts Eren instead. He squints at the sky, frowning.

“Maybe…here?” He taps her shoulder. “Or a little shorter? So it won’t interfere with the straps?”

“Hmm.” Mikasa says.

“Or you could pull it back, like Sasha, but –”

“No.” Mikasa snaps.

“I know.” Eren says. He watches her carefully. Mikasa knows they’re thinking of the same thing.

“Where’s Armin?” Eren asks. Sasha is passing in front of them, each step labored, her daemon clutched against her chest.

“Eating dinner.” Mikasa answers. “He knows better than to get involved.”

Eren laughs. “And I don’t?”

Mikasa shrugs.

“Eh, maybe you’re right.” Eren shrugs

“She is.” Asena’s voice is throaty. Eren cocks his head at her.

“Probably.” He agrees, laughing again. “C’mon, let’s go cut your hair.”

 

Armin finds them soon after; Mikasa is sitting on a bucket outside the boys’ dormitory, and Eren is squinting at her hair. He’s managed to find a pair of scissors from somewhere. Mikasa is watching a tiny blond girl offer Sasha bread and water when Armin walks up.

“What are you doing?” Armin asks. Then: “Mikasa, are you cutting your hair?”

“Mmm.” Mikasa says in agreement, trying to nod and forgetting that Eren is holding a chunk of her hair in one hand. “Ow.”

Armin grabs a torch from one side of the dormitory door and walks closer, illuminating them. “Is this because of what Jean said about your hair?”

“No.” Mikasa snaps.

“What?” Eren says, releasing her hair. “What did he say?”

“He thinks she’s pretty.” Armin says, and smiles at her.

“That’s not what he said.” Mikasa says before Eren can speak. “He said he’s never seen anyone who looked like me.”

Eren rests a hand on her shoulder.

“And he said that your hair was pretty.” Armin finishes.

“Mikasa hates when people say that.” Eren tells him. “That she looks different. It’s rude. Besides, she’s cutting her hair so it won’t get tangled with her gear.”

“Good thinking,” Armin says seriously. Medea leaps off of his shoulder, flying on a strand of silk, and lands on Mikasa’s hand. She pets Medea’s red and blue abdomen with a gentle finger.

Armin doesn’t know everything that happened, and he hasn’t asked. Mikasa doesn’t really want to tell him, doesn’t want to remember it. But Eren knows – she explained, haltingly, why the kidnappers wanted her and her mother. That one of them had smelled her hair, had held it to his face and let it run between his fingers. That they bound her mother’s hair and cut it off her ruined head, intending to wash it free of blood and then sell it.

 _“Anything sells on the black market, sweetie_ , _”_ One of them had said, leering at her. _“Including you.”_ He had yanked on her hair then, pulling her head against his, forcing her neck to curve backwards, and laughed when she had struggled to get away.

Shou interrupts this memory by snapping his jaws shut on empty hair.

 ** _We are not prey_ , **He thinks at her. **_Not anymore._**

 _Never again_ , she responds.

“Mikasa,” Eren says, laying a hand on her shoulder. She blinks, coming back to herself. He moves to her side, doing something with her hair. “This is what I’m going to cut off. Is that okay?” He’s gesturing half way down her neck, right above where the collar of her military jacket would be.

“Yes.” Mikasa says. She rubs the ribbon covering her tattoo, and Eren’s eyes track her movement, but he doesn’t ask. She hears the _snick, snick_ of the scissors and watches her hair fall, floating down to the ground like a feather.

Eren’s the only one she trusts at her back with a blade, something that needs to change if she’s to be successful here, but right now Mikasa doesn’t care. She knows that if she has a sturdy blade she could kill everyone around her. She doesn’t care to think if they could do the same.

Medea leaps up again, flying on silk, and Mikasa hears Armin’s soft greeting. Shou is tangled with her hands on her lap, eyes staring out into the night. Eren works quickly, scissors sawing through her hair. He steps over Asena, curled up beside Mikasa, rather than make her move, and then it’s done.

“The wind will blow this away.” Eren says, gesturing with his free hand at her hair, strewn around them. “No one will keep it.”

“Hmm,” Mikasa agrees, reaching out and carding her hands through her new, shorter hair.

“I can’t believe Jean thinks you’re pretty,” Eren says after a minute, sniggering.

“Mikasa _is_ pretty,” Armin sounds deeply offended.

“That’s – that’s not what I meant,” Eren is still laughing. He brushes Mikasa’s collarbone with his knuckles in apology. “I just can’t believe he told her to her face. It sounds like he announced it in front of everyone!”

Mikasa brushes a piece of hair off of her skirt. “Come on,” she says. “We should return the scissors and the bucket.”

Armin volunteers to return the bucket and it’s just Eren and Mikasa again; she follows him into the boys dormitory, where he found the scissors, knowing it’s against the rules but not really caring.

“I do think you’re pretty,” Eren says finally. It’s dimly lit here, and she can only see the glow of his eyes and of Asena’s. He’s opposite it, apparently watching her carefully. “I didn’t mean what I said, like it sounded.”

She smiles. “I know.” She tells him. “I don’t mind it. You, or Armin.”

 

(They’ve never meant it that way, him or Armin – they’ve never looked at her like she was something to be used or touched without permission. And she doesn’t know how to talk about that, how to express gratitude for something that should go without saying, that should always happen.

She had forgotten, in her time on the frontier, tucked away on their tiny farm, what it was like around other people. It had been a stupid mistake.)

 

Eren nods – she sees the jerk of his head through the dim. “Come on,” he says suddenly. “We should get some sleep. Our first physical aptitude test is tomorrow.”

“I can’t wait for everyone to think I cut my hair because Jean commented on it.” Mikasa mutters.

“I’ll punch them.” Eren says calmly.

“Goodnight, Eren,” Mikasa says, reaching out to touch him. She can’t reach and touches Asena’s snout instead, hand bumping against it. Eren doesn’t say anything, doesn’t need too, and Mikasa leaves, hands by her sides, palm still damp from Asena’s nose.

 

*

They pass their aptitude tests narrowly – marrowly enough that Mikasa barely slept, tossing and turning, Eren crashing into the ground playing over and over in her mind.

It hadn’t made sense, the way he balanced at first, feet arched and delicate like a dancer’s, and then crashed – and then everything had made sense, because of defective gear.

 

(It will take Mikasa years to wonder, _defective gear? Or sabotage?_

She knows Armin wonders the same thing.)

 

From there, the rest of the physical aptitude tests are straightforward. Mikasa, Armin and Eren have been training specifically for them – they’ve learned how to use a bow and arrow, how to use a knife, how to fight hand to hand. They used to run around the farm before sunrise, every morning to train, lungs burning in the frigid air and dirt crunching beneath their feet.

Truthfully, it’s Armin that Mikasa is worried about now. She worries about him not passing and about him leaving.

Eren is selfish enough not to leave if Armin does. He won’t give up on his dream, and Armin would never ask him – he knows Eren would resent him, that even if Eren did, he’d leave Armin because of it. But if Eren won’t go, neither with Mikasa, and Armin would be alone.

She swore that wouldn’t happened, both to herself and Herman, so she makes sure it won’t. She trains Armin relentless; she practices knife work and hand to hand with him. She runs with him. She bullies Sasha, who is an ace with a bow, on tutoring him.

 

(“Connie was right,” Armin says after one such session. “She’s from a hunting village. She can even do trick shots, that’s how good she is.”

“You don’t have to be that good,” Mikasa says immediately, reaching out to touching his shoulder. “You just have to pass. And you will.”)

 

Armin does pass. Because, as Mikasa is learning, you don’t have to have a brilliant mind to be a soldier. But if the command notices you do, they’ll do their best to overlook any physical weakness. And Armin is worth it. Mikasa isn’t sure of many things, but she’s sure of that.

 

*

 

The first thing Shadis teaches them after all of their physical aptitude tests are over is how to fall.

“This will come in handy,” Shadis tells them solemnly, “when you mess up using their 3D Maneuver Gear, or when someone kicks your ass at hand to hand.”

“Great,” someone – it sounds like Franz – mutters behind Mikasa. “Can’t wait.”

None of them are particularly good at it – it’s hard to remember to slap the ground _and_ fall at the same time. Mikasa deposits Shou on the ground before falling, careful not to step on him or Medea, and as she stands up she notices Annie isn’t participating. She looks sullen as usual, hands crossed over her chest, her owl daemon perched on the fence near to her.

“Leonhart!” Shadis’s voice cracks out. He strides up to her. “Why are you practicing?”

“I already know how to fall.” Annie says quietly.

“I see.” Shadis says. He moves away – and then executes a sweeping kick, knocking Annie’s feet out from under her. Annie falls perfectly, slapping the ground and bouncing back onto her feet, fists raised.

“Hmm.” Shadis says. “Practice with Ackerman.” He walks off, moving towards Jean and Eren, who are fighting instead of falling.

Annie watches Mikasa impassively.

“Are you here to make sure I fall?” Annie asks, raising one eyebrow.

Mikasa shrugs. “Maybe I’m here to make you fall.” She suggests. Annie’s creepy bird daemon is watching, head cocked to the side.

“You can try.” Annie sounds utterly relaxed; so Mikasa attacks, aiming a punch at Annie’s face and then mimicking Shadis’s kick. “Annie, fall.” She says coolly, and Annie does, slapping the ground. Her eyes glitter as she stands back up.

“Cute.” Annie says. “Your turn.” She lunges, spins, and uses her elbow to drive the air from Mikasa’s lunges. Mikasa falls rather than stagger backwards, because that’s what she’s supposed to do. Let Annie under estimate her. Let them all under estimate her.

She slaps the ground. Annie looks down at her.

“You done?” Annie sounds bored.

“Your daemon is ugly.” Mikasa makes sure she sounds just as bored.

Annie lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Doesn’t have to be pretty to kill.” She holds out a hand. Mikasa cautiously takes it, and Annie hauls her to her feet. “We don’t have to be pretty all the time.” Annie’s blue eyes find hers. “Isn’t that why you cut your hair?”

Mikasa stares at her.

“Leonhart! Ackerman! Get back to work!” Shadis yells.

“I think it’s my turn.” Annie says when Mikasa doesn’t answer her, seeming to deflate a little. Mikasa doesn’t understand her.

“It is.” Mikasa says, and shoves her down.

 

They practice a lot; swords, 3D Maneuvering Gear, hand to hand combat, archery, hunting, medical knowledge, titan knowledge and cooking. Mikasa thinks their entire first year is spent practicing, or her helping Armin and Eren, or her and Armin preventing Eren and Jean from fighting (again). Summer fades into fall, and fall fades into winter – and then they’ve been trainees for half a year, and Mikasa wakes up.

 

*

 

It’s New Years Eve, and Shadis has let them go into Trost to celebrate.

“What’s the point, if we can’t drink?” Connie bemoans, staring in the window of the pub they’re passing. “That’s what today is all about, right?”

“Connie,” Christa points out. “It’s not even dinner time yet.”

They’ve been let into the town with strict instructions:

1)   be at the gates at 10 pm

2)   always go in a group

3)   don’t get into a fight

4)   don’t steal

5)   stay armed.

Sasha and Ymir are arguing over...something, Mikasa lost track a while ago, and Marco and Jean are discussing where they should go to eat.

“Hey,” Armin says, touching her wrist gently to get her attention. “Did you notice?” Christa’s daemon settled.”

“Hmm?” Mikasa asks, and peers at Christa. Sure enough, her daemon has been the same flowery shaped bug for the last three days. “Hey, Christa,” she says, preventing an argument between her and Connie starting. “Your daemon settled. What kind of bug is he?”

Christa flushes, obviously pleased, and Ymir slings an arm around her shoulders without breaking her argument with Sasha.

“He’s some sort of mantis,” she says.

Mikasa fights the urge to recoil.

“I don’t really like bugs,” Christa is saying, “but I like him.”

“Good.” Mikasa forces out.

“What’s his name again?” Connie asks.

“Abrax,” Christa answers. Then: “that’s a rude question, you know.”

“Is it?” Connie asks. “But we’re all friends, like – we live breathing down each other’s necks, you know. I think we should know everyone’s daemon’s name, in case of an emergency or something.”

“Hmm,” Jean drawls. “But ‘Connie’s tiny dog daemon’ sounds so much better.”

“Her name is _Skylla_ ,” Connie snaps.

Marco lays a hand on Jean’s arm. “Jean, stop,” he orders, and Jean quiets.

“You okay?” Eren murmurs.

“Mhm,” Mikasa glances at her. They’re close enough that she can see herself reflected in his green eyes. “I don’t like mantises.”

“Who does?” He asks, grinning. “They’re freaking looking.”

 _Food_ , Shou thinks.

 _Ick_ , Mikasa sends back, shuddering.

“Not as freaky as Annie’s bird daemon,” Mikasa mutters.

Armin, overhearing, laughs. “It’s an owl,” he explains.

“What?” Mikasa turns to look at him. “It doesn’t look like any owl I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s a barn owl,” Armin draws the shape of its face with his fingers, so like Herman that Mikasa’s heart hurts. “They have a heart shaped face, that’s why they look so weird.”

“It looks like a monster.” Eren says, shaking his head.

“Hey,” Ymir says, finally done arguing with Sasha. “Jean! Don’t you live around here?”

“Me?” Jean asks, turning to look at her. He walks backward, relying on Connie and Marco to pull him out of the way of other people.

“Yes you, how many horse looking boys are there in this world?” Ymir shakes her head. “You live around here, don’t lie.”

Her daemon – a red-brown furred monkey, chitters from its perch on her shoulder.

“Yeah…” Jean drags out. “Everyone knows that.”

“So, we should go visit your folks!” Ymir suggests. “It’ll be fun.”

“No.” Jean scoffs, and turns around again.

“Can we pick somewhere to go _soon_?” Eren asks. “I’m hungry.”

“Me, too.” Sasha pipes up.

“You’re always hungry.” Everyone choruses.

They end up choosing a cheap meal house that primarily serves stirfry. Food is expensive these days, with the food shortages and the refugees, and even the frontier expansion hasn’t fixed it.

Still, the army has given them each an allowance, so they shove two tables together and sit down, adjusting to allow daemons to fit. Asena, always the biggest, simply curls up next to Eren’s feet.

“Here, a potato for the potato girl,” Jean says, shoving a potato dumpling at Sasha.

“Heeeeyyy,” she whines. “Are you really still calling me that?”

“Oh, I’ll never forget that,” Marco says seriously. His hare daemon is in his lap, dozing. “I don’t think anyone will. It was very memorable.”

“It was _horrible_ , are you kidding?” Eren exclaims. “I thought Shadis was going to explode.”

“It was really funny.” Ymir says. She’s running her fingers through Christa’s hair, like it’s a normal thing for her to do. Maybe it is. Maybe Mikasa’s missed something.

Sasha shrugs. “I gave him half of my potato.”

“Sasha, that was no where near half,” Mikasa says quietly. “That was maybe an eighth.”

“I still _shared_ ,” Sasha points out.

Connie puts his hand on hers, just for a minute. “It was very generous,” he promises her earnestly, and removes his hand. Sasha flexes the hand he was touching, looking down at her, her cheeks red. No one notices – except Mikasa.

Mikasa cocks her head, Shou peeking out from beneath her shirt.

“What’s up?” Armin asks, as the conversation moves on.

“Hmm,” Mikasa says. “I’ll tell you later.”

 

It’s not just that night. It’s every day after that – she notices people touching the way she and Armin and Eren do, but they blush or stammer or look away when they do. Everyone except Ymir, who has no shame. Mikasa’s known that from the first week.

“Armin,” Mikasa says one night, watching Eren and Jean argue. It’s Marco’s time to play peacekeeper. “Everyone keeps…touching.”

Armin smiles at her. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Everyone has a crush on each other.”

“Oh.” Mikasa chews on that for a bit, watching Ymir hug Christa’s shoulders. Christa blushes, and Mikasa frowns.

“I…don’t really pay attention to that.” She admits.

“I know,” Armin says. “That’s why I do.”

She looks at him sharply. He brushes two fingers on the inside of her wrist, gently, and Mikasa relaxes.

“I focus on this stuff so you can focus on other stuff. We’re a team.” He explains. Medea, nestled in his hair like some exotic jewel, moves slightly. “Besides, no one is actually…serious, yet.”

Mikasa looks back at Ymir and Christa.

“Ymir is very forward,” Armin sounds rueful, and a little…envious. Mikasa frowns.

“She’ll listen if Christa says no, right?”

“Oh, of course.” Armin reassures her. “She’s not like that. But – she’s the only one that’s actually made her feelings known.”

“Hmm.” Mikasa hums. “How do people have time for this? Aren’t they busy with training?”

Armin’s face is unreadable, and it makes Mikasa nervous. She’s suddenly aware of how close she is to him. His thigh is brushing hers, and her skin prickles as she realizes; she sways closer, then straightens abruptly. Armin touches her again, more purposeful this time, fingers resting right above their pulse.

“Most people aren’t like you, Mikasa.” He manages not to make it sound like a judgment. “They need more than just training.”

“I do have more, though,” Mikasa protests. “I have you, and Eren.”

Armin’s eyes darken, just a little, and he licks his lips.

“Do you?” He asks.

Mikasa tilts her head. “Yes.” She says, insistent. She’s hot everywhere, under her collar, along her spine. “I don’t have to worry about this stupid…” she pauses. “You’re my best friends.”

“Yeah.” Armin agrees. He’s still looking at her weirdly.

Mikasa remembers, abruptly, celebrating Armin’s birthday. She forgets every year that Armin was born before the rest of them, but his weird birthday means he’s in their year. He’s broadening in the shoulder, arms heavy with muscle, and sometimes he doesn’t seem like her Armin at all – he seems like someone else, with Armin’s face.

“I’m going to go.” Mikasa stands abruptly. Armin’s face is back to normal now, eyes clear, and he smiles at her. “Okay.” He agrees.

She doesn’t run, but it’s a near thing, and spends the rest of dinner doing push ups in the dorms.

Annie comes in earlier than the rest of them.

“Is that what you do?” She asks quietly. “You skip dinner and do push ups?”

“No.” Mikasa snarls, because she’s never done this before.

Annie unbuttons her shirt, revealing her underclothes, and joins her unceremoniously.

“I don’t have time for – romance.” Mikasa says around her fiftieth push up.

“Finally clued in, have you?” Annie says.

Mikasa switches to only using one arm.

“No idea how other people have time for it,” she grunts. Her arm is starting to burn.

“They aren’t the best.” Annie says as she pushes up. “That’s why.”

Mikasa collapses, gasping, and then rolls over onto her back.

“It’s stupid.” She mutters.

“I know.” Annie says, sitting back on her haunches. “Just don’t get involved.”

Mikasa glances up at her, at her daemon – Kuba. “Armin says your daemon is a barn owl,” she says finally.

Annie smiles at her. It’s the first time Mikasa’s seen her smile.

“You could have just asked me.” She points out.

Mikasa shrugs.

“He is.” Annie says, nodding up at Kuba. “That’s why he hunts at night.” She glances at Mikasa.

“I remember.” Mikasa says, just as Mina and Sasha walk in.

 

*

 

A memory:

 

_Three months into training, when fall was settling in, Shadis had taken them camping. While Jean and Eren had bickered over how to start a fire, Annie and Mikasa had been sent to hunt._

_“Your bird going to help us out with this?” Mikasa had asked, bow held loosely by her side. Kuba was on Annie’s arm, claws digging into a thick leather hawking glove Shadis had given her. They weren’t permitted to wear their full 3D Gear outside of practice yet, so they were parading around the woods in full harness but without blades or canisters. Annie had a hunting knife; Mikasa had a bow and arrow._

_“No.” Annie says shortly. “He only hunts at night.”_

_“Hm.” Mikasa had said._

_They were north of Trost, closer to Sasha’s village than anywhere else. Ordinarily, Shadis had explained, he would have sent Sasha, since she knew the terrain. But everyone needed an experience, and she already had plenty._

_Mikasa neglected to mention that she **also** had plenty of experience. She had learned early one not to argue with him._

_“What about your snake?” Annie asked suddenly. Her eyes seemed very pale in the gloom of the forest. All of her did – her corn silk hair, her skin. Mikasa glanced at her._

_“If he did, we wouldn’t be able to eat it.” She said shortly. “The venom would kill us.”_

_“So he’s useless.” Annie muttered. Mikasa had resisted the urge to grab an arrow and shoot her in the foot._

_Shou fixed Annie with his unblinking stare. **I will bite you and then we will see who is useless,** he promised. _

_Pickings were sparse, in the forest overtaxed by refugees and a village. Mikasa and Annie had set snares and wandered, trying to be quiet, trying not to scare the game away._

_They were crouched down amidst the brush, trying to blend in, when Annie had suddenly stabbed the blade of her hunting knife deep into the earth. She raised it to show a wriggling snake, speared through the neck._

_“Never liked snakes.” Annie had said coolly, pulling the thing off of her knife and flinging it into the brush._

_Mikasa and Shou had stared at her, Mikasa pulling an arrow out of her quiver and notching it to her bow without thinking, Shou opening his mouth to reveal the black he was named for._

_“Annie!” Someone – Mina – had called. “Mikasa!”_

_The sound had startled birds overhead and Mikasa had looked up, sighted, and shot; a bird dropped close by, it’s wounded cries echoing through the forest._

_Mikasa had sighted and shot three more times, and two more birds had fallen. She rose, Annie rising with her, and walked towards the nearest bird. It stared at her, one wing useless, the other flapping. Mikasa had picked it up and felt the quickness of its heart; the sound that meant it knew death was coming._

_Looking at Annie, she’d broken its neck._

_“I’m tired of your games.” She had snapped. “Be a loner or don’t, I don’t care. But don’t waste my time, and don’t interfere with our assignment. I’m not here to fuck around.”_

_She had never said that word before – Shou said it enough for the both of them – and it felt strange in her mouth, tasted like bitterness and like power._

_The sound of Mina trying and failing to walk quietly through the forest had snapped them out of their staring contest._

_“Okay.” Annie had said suddenly. “Alright.”_

_“Alright.” Mikasa had repeated. “Let’s get these birds, go find Mina, and check the snares.”_

_Ever since then, they’d been fine. Weird, rivals, but fine._

 

*

 

Except – after talking to Armin, Mikasa notices how Annie watches Eren. The way she tracks his movements. She’s normal enough with him, is as rough as usual when she teaches him her hand to hand moves, but there’s a strange hunger in her eyes when she thinks no one is looking – at dinner, or during 3D Maneuvering Practice.

It pisses Mikasa off.

 

They’re practicing 3D maneuvering today, hunting ‘titans’ in the forest outside of the training ground.

Annie is watching Eren, and Connie is watching Sasha, and Ymir is watching Christa, and Reiner is watching Bertolt, and Mikasa is _so_ tired of watching them all. Tired enough that as she flies through the air, both swords extended, she cuts in front of Annie and steals her kill.

Annie lets it go, maybe because she and Mikasa always do this – and then Mikasa does it again, and again.

She slices the neck off of the latest ‘titan’ and swings away – and then Annie crashes into her, blades sheathed but arms outstretched.

They crash into a thick tree branch, Annie grabbing Mikasa with one hand. She shoots a wire into a branch straight above them with the other hand and Mikasa is forced to release her own wires, letting Annie pull her up. Kuba flies above them, circling like he would above a fresh kill.

“ _What is your problem?!”_ Annie snarls, still clutching Mikasa, her eyes blazing. Shou hisses in indignation, flinching away from the pressure of Annie’s arms.

“Why are you watching Eren?” Mikasa demands, struggling free of Annie and backing up, one hand on her blade.

Annie stares at her.

“Are you _jealous?_ ” She sneers. Kuba dives down, landing heavily on a branch right next to them, talons gouging the bark right off.

Mikasa glares at her. “I thought you didn’t have time for this shit,” and she’s not _jealous_ , she’s – Annie doesn’t get to look at Eren like that, no one does. Annie especially doesn’t, when she’d just promised Mikasa that she didn’t have time for crushes. Or was a lie?

“I don’t _like_ him.” Annie sounds frustrated. “I just – I don’t understand him.”

Mikasa’s chin juts out. “Most of us don’t.” She admits finally.

“I don’t get idealistic people,” Annie shifts her weight, like she’s uncomfortable. “I just – I’m not trying to infringe on your territory.”

“He’s not my _territory_ ,” Mikasa snaps, and Annie hits her with a flat stare.

Shadis and the others are approaching.

“You’re an idiot.” Annie says, with no heat.

“I need you – to not do this thing.” The anger has leeched right out of her, suddenly and without warning. “I need you to be outside of it, with me.”

“Mikasa,” Annie says, as Shadis reins his horse in beneath their tree branch, his dog daemon standing at his horse’s flank. “You’re already doing it.”

“Have you ladies resolved your disagreement?” Shadis yells up at them. He doesn’t seem to be mad – in fact he often encourages their rivalry – but Mikasa knows they’re pushing it.

She and Annie turn and salute him.

“Good.” Shadis bellows. “Rejoin the others.”

 _“I’m not doing it_ ,” Mikasa hisses, and takes off. Annie waits a beat before following.

 

*

 

She’s not ‘doing it’ – but Eren is _hers_ , similar to how Armin is hers. Eren is so wrapped up in her thoughts, in her body, that she rarely thinks about it. It’s automatic to track Eren and Asena, to follow them, to have her spine curve in Eren’s direction.

Annie can look, and Annie can try to understand, but Annie will _never_ understand – not the way Mikasa does, not the way Armin does.

Everyone’s spent so long looking at the shape of the words in Eren’s mouth, in his throat, that they forget to look at his eyes; their darkness and their gleam, the endless depth, the way light fractures within them and the way everything… _breaks_ , when he loses control.

 

_(“Eren, why are you crying?” She had whispered when he’d blinked awake, on That Day, and for a minute his eyes hadn’t been green but a queer rainbow, color and darkness streaking through them._

_Asena had looked over at them, her head rested on Eren’s knee, and there were tears slowly wetting her fur._

**_I didn’t – I didn’t know daemons could cry,_ ** _Mikasa had thought haltingly at Shou, eyes flicking from Asena and back to Eren, who was staring up at her with something like wonder and something like fear._

 **_Did you think that when you cried, your soul remained untouched?_ ** _Shou slithered down her shoulder and arm, and then he wrapped himself around Eren’s arm, head resting on Eren’s wrist._

 _For a moment – so fleeting she barely notices it – Mikasa wonders what Shou knows, what they **all** know, what they aren’t telling her. And then Eren blinks, and she forgets thinking that at all._ )

 

Knowing someone so intrinsically, so deeply, that you cannot imagine life without that, that there wouldn’t _be_ life without them – that is not the same as what everyone else is doing, right?

Mikasa doesn’t know, doesn’t have time for this, but there are some things she _does_ know:

  1.      What Eren’s body looks like, spine and feet and hands and eyes, the line of his mouth and the way his knees bend when he walks, the line of Asena’s back and the exact suspicious yellow of her eyes
  2.      Where Eren goes is where she will follow, and so will Armin.
  3.      There’s no room for Annie to understand him, not when she and Armin already do, not when she and Armin take up the whole of his world, the whole of his sky.



 

*

 

Levi fighting is one of the best things Mikasa’s ever seen.

She supposes everyone feels that way when they see him for the first time – the way he spins, one blade held down and the other held up with a backwards grip, slicing chunks out of the titans before reaching the ‘neck,’ where he flips one blade and neatly cuts out the entire nape.

Her classmates are cheering, but Mikasa is trying to figure out Levi’s technique, trying to figure out how _she_ would do the spin, if she could do the backwards grip. Shou is also watching, head poking out of her scarf, but his eyes are firmly fixed on Levi’s daemon, a multicolored bird with eyes as fierce as Levi’s.

The two people that came with Levi from the Survey Corps – the tall, blond commander (bird daemon) and a messy looking person with goggles (bat daemon) – also applaud, the commander doing so quietly, his comrade bouncing up and down with enthusiasm. Mikasa’s sure they’ve seen Levi’s demonstration hundreds of times; perhaps the novelty never wears off.

“Thank you, Levi.” Shadis says as Levi lands on the ground and sheathes both blades. Shadis’s dog daemon wags its tail exactly once.

Armin, standing so close to Mikasa that their elbows keep bumping, startles a little bit. Mikasa glances at him, sees that Medea is rubbing her forelegs together in thought.

Levi must have served under Shadis, Mikasa realizes after a minute. Her shoulder brushes Armin’s for a moment, a quiet _I figured it out_. Before Shadis left, before everything went to shit – Levi must have served under him.

She remembers, now, that the blond commander was there on that day, that he had turned his face away from Eren’s enthusiasm in shame, big shoulders hunching inward.

His daemon, a tiny but ferocious looking bird, notices her watching and turns its head to glare at her full on. Shou and Mikasa meet its gaze, Shou opening his mouth a little – not a challenge, but an acknowledgment. A greeting, even, in the manner of predators.

Levi salutes Shadis, one scarred hand smacking against his chest, and then goes to stand next to his fellows. The survey corps vistors end up watching as Shadis drills Mikasa and her trainees. By now they’ve been under his tutelage long enough that he doesn’t have to bellow or insult them; instead he yells out a name and they attack the fresher ‘titans’ brought out by assistants, sheering off the napes as they’ve been taught.

“Did you notice?”Armin mutters as he gets back into line with Mikasa, the _shick_ of Bertolt’s blades covering his words from Shadis. “Erwin’s and Levi’s daemons – what everyone says is true. They’re complimentary.”

Mikasa glances away from Reiner’s flying form to peer at Levi and Erwin. Levi is staring right at her, face expressionless, and she forces her face to match his, trying not to make it too obvious that she’s staring at his and Erwin’s daemons.

 

*

 

She’d heard the rumors, of course – everyone has heard the rumors about humanity’s strong soldiers and the man that commanded him, that held the leash to Levi’s metaphorical collar. That their daemons matched, that they were complimentary, that there was something _odd_ about the two of them, adding to the _odd_ of the Survey Corps.

Both daemons are teal and purple, with buff colored breasts and fierce eyes, but Levi’s daemon is the shape and size of a crow, and Erwin’s daemon is tiny and squat and unlike anything Mikasa has ever seen before.

 

_(“Complimentary”, Herman had said one night, deep in the winter, and Mikasa had known without having to look at him that he was stroking his chin. “Their souls compliment each other. He had laughed. That’s obvious enough, isn’t it?”_

_“But what does it **mean?** ” Eren had demanded. He and Armin had always asked these sorts of questions and Mikasa had just listened, stroking Shou’s scaly back, his tongue flicking against the skin of her neck. Nearby, Asena sighed and then rested her head on Mikasa’s arm, the bones of her jaw digging in slightly. Mikasa didn’t mind, liked the weight and the pressure, the reminder of Eren was nearby._

_“I mean –” Eren was saying. “You can be complimentary without having similar daemons, right?”_

_They all knew he was talking about the three of them, whose daemons were only similar in that they were predators, not prey._

_Herman had laughed again. “Yes. Sometimes it’s good that souls aren’t too similar; they need to balance each other out. But the Commander and Levi? I don’t know, I’ve only ever seen them on parades. Do you think they balance each other out?”)_

*

 

Shadis dismisses them, but then – “Ackerman, stay behind!” so she obeys, standing at attention and waiting for him to ask her to approach or for him to come to her.

Eren and Armin linger, Asena making a low, concerned sound. Every time Eren has been asked to stay behind, he’s been in trouble so Mikasa can’t blame him or Armin for being concerned, but

 _They think we’re in trouble?_ Shou laughs in the back of her head, his amusement lazy and slow. _Us?_ He slithers around her neck, the scales of his belly tickling her.

Mikasa ducks her head so her nose brushes the wool of her scarf, inhaling silently. Eren’s scent has long since faded but sometimes she tricks herself into thinking she can smell him, that his scent is rising from the scarf whenever it rains or storms. _For all that Eren whines when we try to look after him, he looks after us, too._ She reminds Shou silently

“Come here,” Shadis orders her, growling voice matching the eerily blue eyes of his dog daemon, so she obeys, walking quickly over to where he and the Survey Corps officers are standing.

“Commander, Squad Leader, Heichou – this is trainee Mikasa Ackerman, the finest in her class.” Shadis states it like it’s a fact, no trace of favoritism, and Mikasa keeps her face blank and cool as she salutes.

“At ease.” Commander Erwin says quietly and Mikasa obeys and looks up at him.

It’s like looking at a taller, older, more confident Armin – same blond hair, same blue eyes, and same unnervingly intelligent gaze. Different eyebrows and different daemon, but – for a minute she nearly relaxes, calmed somehow by the resemblance.

“What kind of daemon is that?” The person next to Erwin demands. Mikasa wonders how they can even see, their glasses are so scratched and smudged, but she gives Shou a mental prod.

Shou emerges from her scarf sling with the haughty slowness of royalty, lifting his head and most of the front part of his body out and fixing the goggled person with one unimpressed eye.

“This is Shou,” Mikasa keeps her voice quiet. “He’s a snake.”

“Ooohhh,” they say, clapping their hands. “A _Dendroaspis polylepis!_ How beautiful!”

“Care to translate that for the rest of us, Hanji?” Erwin asks mildly, folding his hands behind his back.

“A Black Mamba!” Hanji says enthusiastically. “Their venom is so deadly it can kill a man in less than half an hour! Oohh, how beautiful,” they coo again. Shou shifts so he can peer at Hanji with both eyes, tail flicking rhythmically against Mikasa’s collarbone. “Black Mambas move very fast and can be up to 3 meters long! How long are you, beautiful?”

It’s rude to address someone else’s daemon, but Mikasa can’t bring herself to mind, not when Shou is basking in the attention. She glances at Shadis and he nods, so Shou unwinds from her neck, slithering down her body and coiling on the ground.

“They also have neck flaps – there you are!” Hanji exclaims as Shou spreads his, looking more like a cobra than himself. His tongue flicks out, and Hanji’s bat daemon, clinging to the strap of their goggles, chirps.

“Fascinating.” Levi’s dry voice makes it sound like he’s not fascinated at all – and then: “Do you think your daemon’s venom will work on a titan?”

He and his daemon are staring at her and Mikasa recognizes the intensity in that stare, because it’s _her_ stare, it’s _her_ intensity – the intensity of a predator, looking at a tool, or at prey.

“I don’t know, sir.” Mikasa copies Erwin, folding her hands behind her back. “We haven’t had an opportunity to test it.”

“I hope you do test it.” Erwin says, making her focus on him. “Titans typically ignore daemons, so they won’t be threatened by yours – wrongly, of course.” He says as if to assure Shou.

“Mai saved my life once,” Shadis’s voice is gravelly as he reaches down and scratches his dog daemon’s ear. “She bit a Titan and then distracted it so I could kill it.”

Erwin, Levi, and Hanji nod. “We remember.” They say together.

“Only a fool underestimates someone’s demon.” Levi says quietly, staring at Shou. His daemon has one orange eye fixed on Mikasa and she stares back, refusing to be unnerved. Erwin rests one enormous hand on Levi’s shoulder, fingers curling around it, like he’s holding Levi down, grounding him. Neither of them seem to notice what Erwin is doing, or that Levi moves into the touch. Hanji doesn’t even blink.

“Have you decided what division you want to join upon graduation?” Erwin asks.

Mikasa shifts towards him, focusing on his face and not his daemon with difficulty. Shou moves until he’s winding around Mikasa’s ankle.

Shadis speaks before she can. “I believe Mikasa intends to follow the two idiots over there,” he nods at Eren and Armin, who are trying and failing to not attract attention. “Her foster brother, Eren Jaeger, and their friend, Armin Arlert.”

“Eren Jaeger…is your foster brother related to Dr. Grisha Jaeger?” Hanji asks interestedly, craning their neck to peer at Eren, who is doing his best to shrink against the wall of the nearest building.

“Dr. Jaeger used to give our wounded soldiers medical attention if they were too injured to wait for the hospital,” Erwin explains. “I was sorry to hear of his death.”

 _His death._ Mikasa had never heard it said like that, conclusively – she and Eren and Armin had never actually discussed it. She and Armin had always understood to just not to ask, and Eren had never brought it up. Last she had heard, Dr. Jaeger had left earlier that day, and had never been heard from since.

“Thank you.” Mikasa says after a minute, not knowing what to say.

“He was a good man.” Shadis agrees. He rests a hand on his daemon’s neck. “Ackerman, you’re dismissed. Go tell your posse that next time I don’t include them in a meeting, it means they aren’t wanted.”

Mikasa isn’t sure, but as she turns to go, she thinks Levi is…smiling, one corner of his mouth quirked up, eyes sad and far away.

 

*

 

Dinner that night is excited, all of the trainees excitedly discussing their visitors, from Hanji’s weird goggles and bat daemon to Erwin’s commanding presence to Levi’s demonstration and technique.

“So,” Armin says as he and Mikasa sit down. Eren is still in line, talking animatedly with Connie, Sasha, and Reiner. “What were they like?”

Mikasa shifts, Shou squeezing her neck for half a second.

“A mirror.” She admits. “It was liking look at us, but older.”

Armin looks at her calmly, waiting – but Mikasa can’t explain. She’s not good with words, not like him, and she doesn’t know how to communicate this feeling, doesn’t know how to explain what she’s feeling.

“Erwin is…like you.” Mikasa manages, and Armin’s face moves in a way she can’t decipher, which – she likes to think she knows every expression he makes, but he’s been growing up lately and she doesn’t understand. He’s not growing _away_ , and if he tried she wouldn’t let him continue, but he’s shifting, moving into something different, into something she has to relearn everyday.

 

(She doesn’t really mind, because it’s him, because it’s worth it.)

 

“And Hanji – the one with the goggles – is like Eren.” Mikasa’s eyes slide to Eren, watches as he gestures with both hands, Asena pressing against his thigh. “They’re both very…”

“Alive?” Armin asks, setting down his spoon. He’s smiling, eyes bright. Mikasa glances back at him, noting how his shoulders are stretching his worn white shirt and his brown vest. She’s always loved that vest on him, loves how it frames his chest.

“Mm.” She nods. “They’re both –” her hands, so good with weapons, are not meant to arc gracefully in conversation. “So much. Their spirit is big enough to be a weapon.”

Armin keeps smiling. “Does that make you Levi? You do look similar, with the hair and eyes. The thing he wears is a cravat, though, not a scarf.”

Mikasa thinks about Levi, thinks about how he’s coiled and ready for a command at all times, thinks about the devotion printed into every line of his body.

“I guess.” She says, poking at a chunk of meat.

“Remember what Grandfather said, about Erwin and Levi’s daemons?” Armin asks. “Do they balance each other out?”

Mikasa thinks about the way Erwin touched Levi, so casually, almost unprofessionally.

“I think they complete each other,” she mutters. “Two halves of a whole.”

Armin is prevented by answering as the rest of their friends sit down at the table, trays slapping down loudly. Eren sits down next to Mikasa, their shoulders brushing, and Sasha sits next to Armin; Connie sits at the head of the table, near Sasha and Reiner sits at the other head, closer to Mikasa.

A quick glance slows Bertolt, Marco and Jean are arguing about…something, probably something stupid.

“So,” Reiner says in his deep, slow way. “What they did want with you, Mikasa?”

“I think Hanji just wanted to see Shou,” Mikasa says; at his name, Shou pokes his head out of her scarf, glancing around at them all. “They called Shou beautiful about five times.”

Reiner’s daemon, some sort of turtle, is on the table next to his tray, and he turns his head to stare at Mikasa and Shou imperiously, jaw opening and closing slowly.

Mikasa glances at Armin. “Hanji even knew Shou’s scientific name.”

Armin smiles sadly and Mikasa pokes his calf with her foot, watching him and Medea carefully until Armin is smiling at _her_ , sadness stowed away.

“That Levi, huh?” Connie asks, pressing one hand to his chest, as if overcome. “His blade technique – _so cool!”_ His daemon, Skylla – she settled in late December – yips in agreement. “I want to learn that spinning move.”

“Connie.” Eren says suddenly, leaning forward, eyes intent. “Is your heart on the right side of your chest?”

“Oh, Eren, leave it alone.” Sasha speaks around a mouth full of food. “When is everyone going to let that day go?”

Connie is blushing, ears bright red.

“It is.” He says suddenly.

“What?!” Armin, Reiner, and Sasha demand.

“My dad was a doctor.” Eren says after a minute, still watching Connie. “One of his patients had her heart on the right side. Dad figured it out when he tried to listen to her heartbeat but couldn’t hear anything the left side.”

“Wait,” Reiner says slowly. “So…on our first day, you _were_ giving your heart!”

Connie shrugs. “I never got to explain to Shadis because _someone_ ,” he grins at Sasha, “was eating a potato, and…then I just never bothered. I salute on my left, now, like everyone else.”

“You’re joking.” Sasha says. She’s actually put down her spoon and is peering at Connie, like if she stares hard enough she’ll be able to see his heart.

“I’m not!” Connie insists. He grabs her right hand and presses it against his chest, on his right side; he pulls so hard that Sasha tips towards him and has to brace herself against his chest with both hands. “See?”

“ _Wow,”_ Sasha breathes. “I can _feel_ it. Guys, I can _feel_ it!”

Connie is looking at her in a way he’s never looked at the rest of them, tender and gentle and a little amused – and Mikasa has to look away.

She catches Armin watching her, eyes bright and intent, like he’s figured her out, and Mikasa glares at him.

 

She finishes eating early, stepping over Asena and Skylla, who are sprawled on the floor near each other, and buses her tray before heading outside. February is just beginning and the cold makes goosebumps erupt along Mikasa’s arms, beneath her sweater; she hugs herself, Shou burrowing between the scarf and her skin. She pauses on the steps, unwilling to go back to the dorms quite yet, not wanting to find Annie doing push ups, or Christa and Ymir kissing (something she’s already walked in on twice).

“Mikasa.” Armin calls, and she turns to look at him.

“Okay?” Armin asks, stopping next to her. Mikasa shrugs, fidgeting. One thigh strap is too tight and she bends to adjust it, trying and failing to ignore him.

“Are Connie and Sasha…are they dating?” she asks when she’s fixed her strap. She looks up at Armin and sees that he’s laughing at her – not out loud, but with his eyes, bright even in the dim.

“Not yet,” he answers, turning to lean one arm on the rail. “But they both like each other. They just haven’t talked about it yet. I don’t think they will for long time.”

“Why?” Mikasa demands, straightening with a scowl. “That’s stupid. They both like each other, right? Why not do something about it?”

Armin is giving her that strange look again, his lips in a small smile but his eyes dark, like he knows something she doesn’t.

“People don’t always work like that,” he says when the silence between them goes for a little too long. “Maybe they don’t _know_ they like each other. Maybe they’re scared to bring it up. I think – I think Connie is waiting for Sasha to realize how she feels, and then he’ll probably wait until she realizes how _he_ feels, and then they’ll talk about it.”

Mikasa shakes her head. “That’s still stupid. What if he misses his chance?”

Armin shrugs. “I think they’ll figure it out.” He’s watching her carefully, and after a minute he reaches up and touches her face, her cheek, fingers as light as Medea’s feet. Mikasa lets him, even leaning into the touch a little, eyes automatically seeking out and finding Medea, who is nestled in Armin’s hair.

“Do you like anyone, Mikasa?” Armin asks, smiling a little. “Now that you’ve noticed all of this?”

“No.” Mikasa says immediately. “You and Eren are all I need.”

Armin laughs, eyes lighting up. “I’m glad.” He assures her, still touching her cheek, and Mikasa allows herself to smile.

 

*

 

Mikasa’s birthday comes suddenly; the snow falls, melts, and falls again, and then she is –

“Fourteen now, eh?” Eren’s smile is broad as he looks at her. Mikasa is squished between him and Armin, and she smiles back at him. Asena puts her snout on Mikasa’s knee, each breath tickling Mikasa’s skin. Mikasa reaches under the table to pet her, running her finger gently down the side of Asena’s nose, rucking up her skirt a little in the process. Armin, next to her, has her hand on her other knee, thumb tracing gentle circles. He’s engrossed in conversation with Bertolt and Reiner, Medea resting on the table next to his plate, but when Mikasa’s hand bumps his under the table, Armin glances at her and smiles.

“Older than you,” Mikasa tells him, using her knife and fork to trap any runaway peas.

Eren rolls his eyes. “For _a month_.”

Shou, around her neck, squeezes gently, before poking his head out of her scarf and peering at Eren.

“Hello,” Eren tells him quietly, face smoothing out.

Shou moves, elevating himself and stretching out until his head bumps against Eren’s shoulder. Lightning cracks down Mikasa’s spine.

Mikasa glances at Armin again, at Bertolt and Reiner, to make sure they haven’t noticed. She sees Connie and Sasha sitting together, laughing over something; sees Annie, Christa, Ymir and Mina sitting together, or rather Christa and Ymir and Mina sitting together and Annie off to the side, playing with her food. Jean and Marco are walking towards the table, Marco talking to Jean and Jean ignoring him – jaw set and hands behind his back, as if he’s carrying something and wants it to be a surprise.

Armin’s shoulder brushes hers as he gesticulates something about Levi’s spinning move to Reiner and Bertolt, and Mikasa looks away from Jean and Marco to look at him. He squeezes her knee but continues talking to Reiner and Bertolt, and then Eren slings one arm over her shoulders and squeezes until she’s pressed against his side.

“Happy Birthday,” Eren mumbles in her ear. She doesn’t have to look to see that he’s blushing, that his eyes are strange and soft but present. His arm is pressing against Shou – Mikasa’s stomach leaps as it always does – and Shou makes a soft, satisfied noise.  With difficulty, she extracts one arm and curls it around Eren’s waist, hand coming to rest on his hip.

Out of the corner of her eye she sees Jean stop abruptly, Marco almost running into him. Marco glances at her direction and then back at Jean, then pulls on Jean’s shoulder. Jean follows him without complaint, face blank.

“How odd,” she mutters.

“Hmm?” Eren asks. Asena is moving under the table, towards Eren; he scratches her under the table and Mikasa feels Asena’s tail thump against her calves.

“Jean and Marco.” Mikasa half whispers, moving so her lips almost brush his ear.

“More like just Jean.” Eren retorts, extracting his arm from around her shoulders and leaning forward so he can pet Asena with both hands.

“I think Marco likes him.” Mikasa admits, still whispering.

Medea moves on the table, moves until her two front legs are resting on Mikasa’s free hand. Under the table, Armin’s grip on her knee is firmer, more confident, more like a claim or a constant than a reminder.

Eren leans back and twists to look at her, and she can see freckles decorating his nose and cheeks, see the ring of yellow around his pupil.

“I mean…” Mikasa’s cheeks warm and she ducks her head. “Just, how they act.”

“Marco does.” Eren says, and Mikasa looks back at him. His face is so close that his breath stirs her hair. “He likes Jean a lot. Jean just…hasn’t noticed yet.”

Mikasa gives a tiny shake of her head, hair stirring slightly. One corner of Eren’s mouth tugs up in a grin.

“There seems to be a lot of that.” She keeps her voice low, but Eren still laughs at her. Shou bumbles his nose against her collarbone, his hissing laughter echoing in the back of her head.

“Yeah.” Eren agrees when he’s stop laughing, but his eyes are dark, almost hot. He’s giving her a look she’s seen before, a look that’s almost hidden, like he’s tucking something precious away in the lines of his face. It’s a look he gives her when they’re alone, or when she’s fidgeting with her scarf, or executing a perfect titan kill. It’s a look he gives Armin when Armin is explaining something, hands as graceful as Medea when she weaves a web, or when Armin is rubbing his eyes, exhausted, and shoving his bangs off of his head.

Mikasa’s stomach flips over again.

“Hey,” Armin says suddenly, leaning around Mikasa to look at Eren. “Eren.”

“Yeah?” Eren asks, still looking at Mikasa, and then – then he looks away, at Armin.

“Will you help me fix my boots tonight?” Armin asks, and everything comes flooding back – the noise of the dining hall, of everyone in it. The fact that the world is more than her, and Eren, and Armin, more than Asena, Medea, and Shou.

Mikasa wonders if this is how the Survey Corps feel when they go out of the walls, if it keeps happening or if it wears off.

 

*

 

A thought Shou does not share with Mikasa:

 

Eren and Armin are what lay outside the walls, and Mikasa won’t know that until she reaches the top.

 

*

 

“Blouse! Springer!” Shadis booms. Spring is edging into the land, sun melting the frozen ground, so Shadis is drilling them on hunting; snares, fires, archery, etc.

Connie and Sasha, caught _not_ paying attention to Shadi’s lecture on snares, do their thing – Sasha goes up on foot, like a crane, arms extended, and Connie turns towards her and does something with his arms, one hand forming a beak. Their daemons also have their own thing; Sasha’s small bear daemon arches his back like a cat, and Connie’s dog daemon sits up, balancing on her hind legs.

“Why do they do that?” Eren whispers in her ear, his shoulder brushing against her back.

Mikasa shrugs.

“What are you doing?” Shadis stalks towards them, hands behind his back, his dog daemon following. “Do you not have ears to listen with?”

“Sir!” Sasha snaps a salute; Connie follows her a beat later. “I already know how to tie these snares, sir!”

Shadis always approaches Sasha with a slightly perplexed and frustrated manner, born from the incident with the potato. Even when she had sprained her ankle so badly she couldn’t walk while practicing 3DMG, and he had carried her back to base, he had held her…gingerly, like her very being confused him.

“Hmm.” Shadis says after staring at Sasha. He turns to glare at Connie. “And you? Surely you don’t also know these, being from a simple farming village!”

Connie is holding his salute, hand over his empty left chest. His dog daemon puts all four paws on the ground and sits at attention, bright black eyes fixed on Shadis’s dog daemon.

Shadis’s dog daemon lifts one black lip to reveal yellowed fangs.

“Sir! Wherever Sasha goes, I go! I trust her ability to tie snares and would bow to her expertise!”

Mikasa hears Mina gasp behind her. Almost a year of sleeping above the girl means she knows that Mina has clapped a hand over her mouth and that Fidelis is wagging his tail furiously.

Sasha is staring at Connie, eyebrows drawn together. Her little bear daemon trundles over to Connie’s daemon – _Skylla,_ Mikasa remembers suddenly – and thrusts it’s head against Skylla’s shoulder.

“Is that so?” Shadis asks, dangerously calm. “Well then, you will tie the snares by yourself, and then you will accompany Blouse on 10 laps around base!”

“Yes sir!” Connie salutes. He nudges Sasha with his foot until she salutes too. Shadis turns around, satisfied, and glares at the rest of them.

“Partner up and tie your snare! You’ll be using them for the entirety of your camping trip to catch dinner, so I hope you were paying attention to my lecture!” He reaches down, absentmindedly, to scratch on of his daemon’s ears, and her blue eyes soften in bliss. “Blouse, come with me.”

 

While Shadis makes Sasha build every single kind of snare she knows so he can examine them, the rest of them build a basic loop snare. Mikasa partners with Eren; Armin is with Annie, though he keeps glancing over at Connie in concern.

 

 

(Connie looks slightly frantic; his knots keep coming untied. Skylla is running in circles around him and the small sapling he’s supposed to be using, tail held straight up.)

 

“What are you looking at?” Eren asks. He’s focused on the snare, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth as he ties the noose. Shou is watching him with interest, tongue flicking out occasionally.

“Armin.” Mikasa crouches down and puts Shou on the ground; he immediately slithers over to peer at the noose. Eren holds it out for him automatically, turning it this way and that so Shou can look his fill. Asena, sprawled out under their small sapling, also looks up, sniffing loudly.

“He’s gotten really tall.” Eren says absently, putting the noose down and picking up the two sticks that are supposed to form their trigger. He puts them down and then picks up their leader line.

Mikasa tries to gauge the length of the leader line, and then looks at the sapling. “There.” She taps a spot on the ground. “Put the base here.”

Eren obeys, grunting with effort. Mikasa knows that next winter Shadis will expect them to be able to set this snare even if the ground is frozen solid. It’s hard enough already with a spring thaw. There’s a reason this land isn’t used for farming.

“Armin told me that Commander Erwin reminded you of him,” Eren says, breathing labored. “I don’t think he’ll ever be that tall, though.”

He’s wearing that look again, and Mikasa thinks – maybe it’s fondness, maybe it’s something else, something she keeps looking for, something that’s just out of her reach.

 

(Shou sends her a feeling of stretching his entire body, of moving as fast as he can, and still not catching his prey. But it’s different than that – it’s softer, something to coax out rather than be frustrated with.)

 

“I like him shorter than me,” Mikasa says, stupidly, and then stands and tugs the sapling down until it’s a living, quivering crescent moon. Asena huffs in annoyance and stands, shaking her huge body before ambling over to Eren and sniffing at the stake. Mikasa bends and begins to tie the leader line around the tip of their sapling, testing how far it can bend every so often.

“Me too.” Eren says, fitting the hook into the base. He looks up and reaches out for the end of the leader line and Mikasa gives it to him, holding the sapling steady as he ties the final knot.

“There.” Eren says, satisfaction making his voice bright, like winter sunshine. He stands and squints down at their snare, Asena coming to stand next to him. He pets her absently.

“Armin should be an expert on snares,” Eren is still looking down at their snare. “Because of Medea. That’s what spiders’ webs are, right?” He looks up, at Armin, and there’s a weight to his gaze, to his body – something that speaks of things Mikasa doesn’t know, may never know.

 

She knows they bunked together, Armin on the top…or rather she had assumed but they’d never discussed it, she had just _known_. Armin would use the top bunk so Medea could spin webs in the rails and on the ceiling, and Eren would sleep closer to the ground so Asena could sleep tucked in the curl of his body, the body that was the first line of defense if anything tried to come after Armin.

But she hadn’t thought about what that meant – hours of whispered conversation, or them holding hands whenever one had a nightmare, surrounded by the sleeping bodies of their classmates, by their prone forms, never to know, never to tell.

There are some things she and Eren share that Armin is not privy too, things like three dead men, blood and a thunderstorm, things like a red scarf and the offering of a home, a family, and a name – but surely there are things that Eren and Armin share, that she doesn’t know. Surely there are things she and Armin have, that Eren doesn’t. She’s never seen Armin put his hand on Eren’s knee, or on the inside of his wrist, as if checking for a pulse. Surely those are hers alone, are _theirs_ alone.

Eren reaches out and touches her shoulder, fingers smoothing her leather shoulder strap.

He’s always touched Medea more than she has, and she’s always touched Asena more than Armin has, and Shou…Shou touches both of them whenever necessary.

“Do you –” Mikasa cuts herself off. Eren is looking at her now, not Armin, and she regrets speaking. She doesn’t mind if he looks at Armin, doesn’t mind if he touches her shoulder but looks at Armin and she looks at Armin, like Armin is their missing piece or their anchor, she isn’t sure.

It only makes sense when she doesn’t think too hard about it, like using her gear to fly through the air. It’s muscle memory; it’s deeply ingrained. It’s between one breath and the next.

 

At her left, Mikasa can see Shadis frowning down at Sasha’s snares, hands clasped behind his back.

“These are good.” He says finally, still frowning, his squash stem beard jutting out from his chin.

Sasha almost bows, catches herself, and salutes instead. “Thank you, sir!”

“Blouse.” It’s not the bellow that it usually is. “I talked to a colleague of mine about your daemon. It’s a wolverine, right?”

 _A wolverine_. Shou, still on the ground, stops stalking a grasshopper to turn and peer at Shadis and Sasha. As an ambush predator that hunts during the day, his vision is excellent – “ _not like pit vipers_ ,” Herman had explained on one day in the heart of winter, the sun slipping down only a few hours after midday.

“Yes, sir.” Sasha looks a little more relaxed, craning her neck to meet Shadis’s eyes.

“Do you know what else wolverines are called?” Shadis asks. There’s something off about his voice. It takes Mikasa and Shou seeing his dog daemon’s wagging tail to realize it’s amusement.

“No, sir.”

“Gluttons.”

Sasha goggles at him.  “Sir?”

“A glutton is someone who eats enormous amounts of food, who constantly craves it.” Mikasa can only see part of Shadis’s face, but she thinks he’s smiling. She’s never seen him smile before.

Sasha laughs, cheeks rapidly turning bright red.

“You didn’t know.” Shadis says, studying her with a frown, the way Connie frowns when someone doesn’t remember an inside joke.

“Sir – daemons are our souls, aren’t they? All parts of us, knowing and unknowing. So…it makes sense, I suppose.” Sasha bends and picks up her daemon.

“There’s more than wolverines than how much they eat.” Shadis leans forward a little bit, hands flexing behind his back.

“There’s more to Jarek, too.” Sasha replies, equally quiet.

Shadis nods. “Dismissed.” He watches Sasha and her daemon – _Jarek?_ – leave, face turned away, slippery like a new moon.

Mikasa looks away from him, looks at Eren, who is fidgeting with their snare, fine tuning it to be perfect with, not bothering to blink. _We’ll be the hunters_ , he had once said.

Mikasa reaches out and lays a hand on Asena’s back, and Eren pauses, hands trembling. He blinks, then nods, but does not look at her, still focused on the snare. Across the camp, Mikasa sees Armin watching them, his and Mina’s snare still beneath his graceful hands.

Maybe – maybe it is like that, with them. Maybe Armin and Eren are parts of her, the known and unknown, and the span of everything between.

 

*

 

Their camping trip starts the next evening. They travel on horseback to a forest two hours away, a forest that has been guaranteed safe by the Garrison. After setting up base, Shadis arms each group with a tent and a map of where he wants them to go and instructs them to head into the forest, on foot. In another gesture of insight, he has assigned Mikasa to work with both Eren and Armin.

They each have a canteen, a bedroll, their three dimensional maneuvering gear, a pack full of supplies, and a weapon of choice: Mikasa and Armin bring bows and arrows, and Eren brings a long, curved knife.

Eren walks in front, knife drawn; Armin directs them, peering at the map, and Mikasa brings up the rear, bow out and arrow notched. Silence settles over them, soft and familiar, and it takes Mikasa a minute to realize this is how they hunted on the frontier, when the crops were new and game was scarce. Back then, Armin had been weak, too weak to fight off anything it attacked. Now he isn’t but he still lets her and Eren protect him, reading the map more quickly than they could.

 

(Eren probably doesn’t know this formation is for his benefit too, that Mikasa can more readily pick off attackers with her bow, guaranteeing they never make it to him. It’s not something he’d think about and it’s not something she or Armin will bring up – but Armin knows, knew from the very first time they had done it. He had reached behind him, fingers curling up, and Mikasa had touched her fingertips to his for a scant second, warmth dancing through her.)

 

 

In the gloom of the forest, the brightness of Armin’s hair and of Medea’s body serve as beacons.

 _My eyes are better suited to this place_ , Shou tells her, almost sounding smug. Mikasa wonders if he yearns for the forest the way Eren and Armin yearn for the sea. If there’s a part of him that’s more snake than daemon, a part maybe only Asena or Medea can understand.

 _Then keep watch_. She orders him. _Tell me if there’s an animal I can kill._

 _Don’t rob Asena of her chance_ , Shou retorts, already repositioning himself on her neck. _She’s been bored for a while_.

 

This continues for sometime. Mikasa kills two rabbits and Armin carries them, feet lashed to his pack, blood drying on their soft fur.

“I think Shadis wanted us to snare our food.” Armin says when she’s tying the rabbits’ feet to his pack. By the sound of it he’s worrying his lower lip.

“Tough.” Mikasa thinks and Eren actually says.

“We’ll snare food tomorrow,” Mikasa tells Armin, straightening and dusting off her hands. “We have three days, remember?”

Armin fidgets and then turns, the rabbits swinging limply. “I don’t –”

“It will be like the frontier.” Eren cuts him. “You don’t have to be nervous. We’re here.”

Armin slumps, letting out a long breath. Mikasa reaches out and brushes Medea with a gentle finger and feels Armin twitch; his fingers skitter across the inside of her arm, five pinpricks of heat.

“Come on.” Eren says; he’s glancing at the map in Armin’s other hand. “I think…are we nearly there?”

“Yes.” Armin says, turning towards him and pointing east. “That way.”

 

They reach their location as the sun is setting, orange and darkness streaking across the ground and sky alike. While Eren walks a perimeter, Mikasa sets up the tent, scowling at the still partially frozen ground.

Armin is perched on a downed log, squinting at the map.

“There’s a stream nearby…” he notes. “Towards the north.” He points and Mikasa sees Medea on his hand, balanced on the back of it, forelegs stretching towards his knuckles.

“How far?” Eren asks. He’s gathering firewood now, poking around in the leaf litter for old wood. Shadis had yelled at Jean for cutting green wood from trees once before; it had been very memorable.

“Not too far.” Armin is chewing on his lip again. “Two of us should probably go.”

“You and I.” Mikasa says, standing up; the tent is set up, her pack stowed inside of it. “If Eren gets into trouble, we’ll hear Asena howl.”

Armin’s lips curve slowly, one side higher than the other. It’s a smile he mostly reserves for her – a mix of approval and pride, for strategy or tactics he can appreciate.

“Leave the rabbits behind.” Eren puts his pack down too. “I’ll dress them while you’re gone.”

“Don’t give Asena all of the intestines.” Mikasa says and Armin unties the rabbits from his pack. “I’ll need them for more snares.”

 

When she and Armin return, with two full canteens, Eren has dressed both rabbits. He’s also in the early stages of building a fire, tongue poking out of his mouth.

“He’s done that as long as I’ve known him.” Armin says, mimicking Eren’s tongue. His shirt is gaping wide at the collar, like it’s settled wrong, and Mikasa can see Medea perched on Armin’s collarbone, even in the gathering dim.

“Annie and Sasha do that too.” Mikasa murmurs. Asena is watching them, ears pricked forward and eyes yellow like the fading sun.

 

(Mikasa remembers when the nurse had come into the girl’s barracks and taught them about wrapping their breasts, early enough that not many of them needed it. The nurse had made each of them practice wrapping.

“Not too tight, or you’ll hurt yourself and hinder your development.” the nurse had cautioned, smiling as she demonstrated wrapping over her own shirt. “But not too loose, or you won’t have any support.”

“Well how the hell are we supposed to do it, then?” Ymir had muttered, arms crossed over her chest.

The nurse made each of them practice on themselves, giving them what looked more like a roll of linen bandage. Annie and Sasha had both stuck their tongues out while wrapping, Sasha fumbling and Annie going slowly but carefully. For all of her complaining, Ymir got it on the first try. Mikasa hadn’t known where to start, unable to move, only able to see her mother – wrapping and unwrapping, an axe in her skull – Shou was squeezing her neck, trying to get her attention –

“Come on,” Mina had said, taking her hand. Fidelis, not yet settled, had changed into a snake to match Shou. “I’ll help you.”)

 

“Where did you go?” Armin asks, startling her. “What were you remembering?” His hand is in hers, somehow, thumb rubbing over the base of her knuckles and Mikasa shrugs.

“Sometimes…I do that,” she mutters.

“As long as you come back.” Armin says. He walks forward, towards Eren and tugs on her hand. She follows, like she always has, a beat behind both of them, trying to catch up.

 

* 

[art by totallysharpeyed](http://totallysharpeyed.tumblr.com/post/127502618845)

They roast the rabbits on a spit, Mikasa brain tanning the hides and setting the sinews near the fire to cure. They won’t cure in time to be used as a bow string, but she thinks they’ll pass as part of a snare. She throws some of them to Asena, who catches them right out of the air, teeth snapping with terrible finality. Shou elects to slither down her shoulders and onto the ground, moving until his tail is curled around one of Asena’s forepaws. There’s a fierce, pulsing warmth in Mikasa’s chest from their touch, like she can feel Asena’s pulse. It makes her hands shake but she ignores it, ignoring her food until her work is done.

“I’ll take first watch,” she volunteers when she finally cuts off her portion of the rabbit. “You both look exhausted.”

Eren and Armin are huddled on the other side of the fire, giving her space to work. The slow dance of firelight makes them look far away, makes them look like one beast; Eren and Armin and Medea and Asena, parts of a whole.

“Are you sure?” Armin protests, voice slow and heavy.

Eren manages a smile. “C’mon,” he says, pulling Armin up with one hand. “Mikasa – wake one of us in two hours.”

They disappear into the tent, Asena following and Mikasa listens to the sounds of them getting ready for bed with one ear. She has missed this, hearing the whisper of fabric that means Eren and Armin are undressing or slipping into their bedrolls.

 _How long till moonrise?_ Shou thinks to her, peering around suspiciously at the dark.

Mikasa shrugs, Shou moving on top of her shoulders. _Think that won’t happen until next watch_.

 _I’m useless in this light_. Shou’s voice is sharp.

Mikasa reaches up and pets his scaly back. She grabs her knife with her other hand.

 _Should I put out the fire?_ She wonders, standing up to look around.

The fire will bring anything within five miles, maybe more, right to them – but it’s cold, the temperature already sliding down. Her cloak and scarf are no match for the bite of March.

Shou shudders and burrows between her shirt and breast wrapping, trying to leech warmth from her skin.

 _Put it out._ His voice grates against her head, all sibilant hissing gone. _We can stand the cold._

They end up huddling against a large upturned rock, eyes scanning the darkness. After a while Mikasa doesn’t know if her eyes are open; the forest has become so dark that there is a weight to it, to the darkness pressuring down, like the clouds are shutting them away from the light forever.

She wouldn’t have minded if it wasn’t for the cold and the possibility of danger, the certainty that something would find and try to hurt them. Nothing could be trusted, nothing, not after That Day – not the stars or moon, not the trees or sky, not Shadis, not Annie, not Levi.

But Armin and Eren, asleep behind her – they could be trusted. They were simple constants, something to lash her rope too, something she was catching up too.

 

*

 

She crawls in the tent after what she thinks is two hours, having resorted to counting the minutes to stay awake. Eren is curled around Armin, one arm slung around Armin’s waist, their legs forming a weird mass beneath three combined bedrolls. Asena is on Eren’s other side, legs sticking out; Mikasa has to step between them to squat down and tap Eren’s arm, fingers smoothing against the dark warmth of his skin.

(She thinks, maybe, she needs no light to see them, that she would know Eren and Armin even if she had no senses left; souls recognize themselves.)

 

His eyes blink open, shining even in the dark and for a minute, it’s That Day all over again – but Eren isn’t crying, and this time he reaches up to touch her cheek.

She can’t help but turn into it, mouth brushing his palm; she knows rather than sees him smile.

“Two hours.” Eren murmurs, voice creaking like branches in the wind. He extracts himself from his bed roll and pulls on his shirt, muscles moving beneath the skin. Mikasa looks away, suddenly shy, and focuses on Asena, who is yawning, ears flattening against her head. Mikasa hears Eren refastening the top of his harness and glances back at him; she feels Asena struggle to her feet, her tail slapping the wall of the tent.

The rest of Eren’s gear is stowed in the corner of the tent, opposite Armin’s, and for a minute she and Eren begin to replace each other; her gear replaces his, she crawls into his vacated spot, and he takes up her watch. Then he and Asena are gone, and the thought of replacing either of them is so nonsensical that Mikasa lets it go.

She sheds her cloak and scarf, drapes Shou across the smooth dip between Armin’s hip and chest, and unbuckles the top bit of her harness, letting it hang down and bang against her legs. Her shirt is next. Armin is also shirtless, skin pale even in the dark, Medea probably hidden in his hair. Mikasa nearly recoils from the warmth of him when she crawls into bed. She can’t help but press closer instead, greedy, arm supplanting Shou from Armin’s waist, her chest pressed firmly against his back.

“Mmm,” Armin murmurs, voice so heavy it’s barely understandable. “Mikasa.”

“Mhm,” she agrees, pressing her lips to the base of his skull. “Sleep.”

 

Mikasa does not dream whenever she sleeps near Eren and Armin, does not shiver awake from nightmares. Instead she sleep soundly, limbs slowly entangling with Armin’s, her breath stirring the fine hairs on his nape. He moves back against her slowly, sprawling as politely as he can – and then Eren shakes him awake and Mikasa blinks, curling into Armin’s absence, realizing Shou is nestled between her feet.

Eren undresses as Armin dresses. Mikasa hears them but can’t bother to open her eyes, knowing she’s safe. She likes these tiny moments, when the three of them occupy the same space, sharing mundane, everyday tasks. It’s soft and worn in, and before she can think about that too much, Eren settles in behind her.

He pulls her close against him, knees folding behind her own, elbow setting on her waist and hand resting on her chest, thumb absently stroking the edge of her breast wrapping.

Mikasa exhales and Eren copies her, the breath hot on knob of her neck. She hears Asena settle down with a _whuff_ , probably behind Eren.

“Hi,” Eren breathes, and Mikasa murmurs something in reply before falling back asleep.

 

*

 

In the grey dim of morning, Armin comes back, crawling through the tent flaps almost silently. Mikasa only wakes up because Eren sits up, taking the blankets with him.

“Morning,” Eren rumbles at Armin, voice sleep rough and sleep deep.

“Mm.” Mikasa hears Armin agree. She blinks awake and turns to see Armin lean forward and kiss Eren, sweet and a little lazy – like they’ve been doing this for years, like it’s only natural, like it’s part of each breath.

“Oh,” Mikasa breathes and they slowly break apart and look at her, their eyes dark, Armin’s breath hitching.

“Hi,” Armin murmurs after a minute, an echo of what Eren said last night. And Mikasa –

Mikasa _wants_. She sits up too, reaching for Armin, everything moving slow and gentle, like they’re in a dream, like there are no titans and no walls and no world. Like it’s just them.

Armin comes to meet her, lips sweet against her own, and Mikasa curls a hand around the back of his neck and just holds on.

Eren is watching them, Mikasa sees when they stop, and he looks – he looks hungry, like he’s seen something he loves and wants even more. He looks the way he did the first day of training, when he had said _I do think you’re pretty_ , in the dark of the barracks, and she had said _I know_.

Her head is fuzzy with the enormity of this, the familiarity, but the slow gray of dawn is limiting any panic. It’s what makes her reach for Eren, knowing he’ll come to her if she waits –

 

(He and Armin have been waiting a long time, haven’t they? For her to figure it out, for her to notice, for her to want what they want in return.)

 

– And he does, fitting his lips against hers with more gentleness than she’s ever known from him, his hands cupping her face. She can’t breathe and doesn’t want too. She doesn’t want this to stop or end, wants to die like this – with Eren kissing her and Armin keeping one hand on her back, right beneath the end of her binding. His palm his warm on her bare skin and Eren’s lips are careful, and Mikasa has finally, finally caught up.

 

*

 

A fact:

 

They never say I love you; they do not need too.  
  
*

 

When they return from the forest on the fourth day, tired but not hungry, Shadis simply nods at them and tells them to rejoin the rest of the group. Connie, Sasha, Bertolt, Reiner, Mina, Ymir, Christa, Annie, Jean, and Marco are all back already. Sasha is turning a spitted deer haunch over the fire and Jean and Ymir bickering about how long to cook it for. None of them blink at seeing Eren, Armin and Mikasa, even though Mikasa feels like there’s a sign on all of their faces that announces every single kiss.

No one notices that she slips one hand into Eren’s and one hand into Armin’s as they sit down, Asena taking her place by Eren’s side, and Mikasa finally understands what Annie meant by _you’re already doing it_.

She ducks her nose into her scarf and inhales, her chin brushing Shou’s back.

 _We’ve been doing it since Eren wrapped this around our neck_ , Shou tells her quietly.

 _You knew this entire time?_ Mikasa asks. Armin’s thumb is stroking the skin at her knuckles again, the touch like a familiar refrain, and Eren is sneering at Jean. It’s like nothing at changed. Maybe nothing has.

 _Of course_ , Shou sends at her, but there’s gentleness in his voice. _We –_ he sends an image of all of them, bodies tangled together in the hut on the frontier, Asena, Shou and Medea standing guard - _are your soul. Parts known and unknown, and spanning everything between._

 

 

*

A riddle:

 

 _Three children watch everything around them die_. _One becomes a snake in the grass, a knife in the gut. One becomes the alpha wolf, the righteous, the hopeful and the brave. And one becomes a spider, a builder._

_Who did the right thing? Who will survive?_

 

An answer:

 

_All of them, all of them, all of us._

**Author's Note:**

> \- In this fic, Connie has [Dextrocardia Situs Inversus (link)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dextrocardia).  
> \- The snare Shadis has everyone build [looks like this (link).](http://content.artofmanliness.com/uploads//2012/03/snare-diagram-1.jpg)  
> \- Because of her extreme physical fitness, Mikasa's period will probably be significantly delayed, which is why I did not discuss it or any of the other characters' periods in this fic. It's a big part of puberty for some folks but it hasn't happened yet.  
> \- Romantic songs I listened to while writing this are: Oblivion by Bastille (on repeat for a lot of it), You Are In Love by Taylor Swift (also on repeat for a fair bit), We Found Each Other In The Dark by The City and Colour, How Long Will I Love You by Ellie Goulding, Do I Want To Know (Cover) by Hozier, and You by Keaton Henson. Also very critical: Saturn by Sleeping At Last.
> 
>  
> 
> [come visit me on tumblr! prompts welcome](marnz.tumblr.com)


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